FCSI: Las Vegas

I was in Las Vegas recently and it brought back fond memories of my college years.  Not because of the dancing and drinking and partying until the wee hours, although those certainly were similarities.  My college flashback was fueled more by reprising my role as a fashion police officer.

It’s a little known fact that I was Sergeant Simons of the Oregon State University Fashion Police Department – little known, because we were a small and self-proclaimed law enforcement unit.  We were way undercover – meaning our power and authority was not recognized or respected by anyone but ourselves.  The OSUFPD did not emerge as an official unit until my senior year, but I had years of training under my fashionable belt by then. 

I once read a quote that went something like, “True friends are people who dislike the same things as you.”  Isn’t that the truth?  My friend Molly and I used to spend sunny afternoons in between classes in the quad, critiquing the fashion choices of passersby as if we were a double-headed Joan Rivers at a red carpet event.  One day, we started feeling a little bad about our habit of entertaining ourselves by poking fun at others.  So, just to prove we could do it, we vowed to say something nice about the clothing of every single person that passed by.  It was harder than we thought.  Painful silences were occasionally punctuated with excited cries of, “Oh, oh, look, she has really cool shoes!” and “There!  Over there!  That’s a great shirt.”  It took a while, but we finally got on a roll, never mind that our comments were phrased more as questions and went along the lines of, “Um, um, um . . . she has really nice socks?”

By the time my senior year rolled around, my skills were razor sharp and I was ready for active duty, so I joined forces with a group of highly qualified fashion officers to found the OSUFPD.  In addition to general knowledge in fashion criminology, we all had special areas of expertise.  I was the Sergeant in charge of shoe offenses – a SHARC as it’s sometimes called on the street.  Sergeant Kerri specialized in the seedy world of men-in-spandex crimes, Sergeant Theresa was a skilled detective in the That-Makes-Your-Ass-Look-Flat Department and so on.  We were a crack team of fashion enforcement officials patrolling dormitories, lecture halls, the Memorial Union, labs, libraries and all points in between, our sole mission to protect and serve.  OK, our mission was really to entertain ourselves.  You say toe-may-toe, I say toe-mah-toe. 

So there I was, in Las Vegas – a veritable Mecca of horrendous fashion crimes – without my partners in fashion-crime-prevention.  I suddenly knew what it must feel like for a police officer to be alone in the middle of a bank robbery.  “I need backup!  Somebody send backup!” 

Fashion criminals in general, and in Las Vegas in particular, can be categorized into two groups – those who don’t care enough to even make an effort and those who are, despite Herculean efforts, failing miserably.  The former group is made up of people who barely endeavor to comb their hair or brush their teeth, much less pull together a flattering outfit.  The latter group consists of those who clearly spend a lot of time, energy and money on grooming and dressing.  Sadly, their investments are completely overpowered by their terrible taste and judgment.  I could have brought in more money than all the slot machines combined issuing fashion citations for both types of offenses, but without the help of my trusty unit, all I could do was stake out and conduct research.  Any actual enforcement activities would have been far too risky without backup.  So, here is the result of my undercover investigation – a summary version of the Fashion Police Blotter for Las Vegas, Nevada, April 6-10, 2011.  

4/7, 2 p.m. – 5 p.m., Fanny packs, Forum shops

I’ve never seen so many fanny packs in all my life – not even in their late ‘80s/early ‘90s hay-day.  I understand the desire to have hands free for strolling and shopping.  I mean, you might want to take a photo of the free fountain show recounting the myth of Atlantis or you may need to send a text to a friend saying you think you just spotted Britney Spears at the Chrome Hearts store.  Let’s face it, hands are useful, but fanny packs are never acceptable.  They just aren’t.  Especially when securing them around your waist creates a fat roll that subsequently rests atop the fanny pack.  Allow me to suggest a messenger-style bag or any one of the many handbag options that feature both shoulder straps and cross-body straps.  You really can carry your stuff with ease, versatility AND style.

4/6, 8 p.m., Un-tucked dress shirts, Estiatorio Milos (and pretty much every day, time and place thereafter)

What is going on with the guy-trend of wearing nice, button-down shirts un-tucked?  This is a new and puzzling crime that calls for more research.  I have no problem with casual shirts being un-tucked, but guys, when your date is all dressed up for a night out and you’re wearing a dress shirt, please take the extra two seconds to avoid looking like a total slob by tucking it in.  This violation is compounded, and will be fined accordingly, when your entire frat house is traveling in a huge, un-tucked-dress-shirt pack. 

4/9, 11 p.m. – 2 a.m., Un-walkable shoes, Marquee dance club, Cosmopolitan

Let me say this: I love shoes and generally consider “sensible” a dirty word when used to describe them.  There is a time and place for “sensible” shoes.  It’s sensible to wear good running shoes when running a marathon, for example.  That said I have a deep and abiding love for the most insensible of shoes.  Shoes are fun, whimsical and profoundly sexy.  A sky-high stiletto can make a woman’s legs, posture and whole attitude sexy and powerful like nothing else.  But ladies, that only works if you can walk in the shoe.  You have to be able to move naturally and comfortably or the whole effect is ruined.  Having to take itsy-bitsy, teetering steps just makes you look ridiculous and uncomfortable.  And why in the world would you wear shoes like that to a dance club?  I know it’s a fine line, but the balance between form and function simply must be navigated with more finesse.  If you can’t walk in the shoes, you surely can’t dance in them, which explains the droves of women lined up in dance club bathrooms to purchase over-priced flip-flops.  If you were going to end up pairing your little dancing dress with flip-flops, you should have just started out that way and saved yourself some money – both on the flip-flops and on the citation I’m going to have to write you for those absurd shoes.

4/8, 4 p.m., Sloppy track suit, Palazzo shops

I observed a man and his wife in the Christian Louboutin boutique.  The husband was wearing a sloppy track suit, not to mention talking loudly on his cell phone, which is justification for an additional fine.  It’s obnoxious enough to be blabbing at top volume on your phone in any public place, but in a shrine to shoe greatness is completely unacceptable.  The wife was dressed to the nines and loading up on shoes.  The whole scene distracted me from my mission of finding the perfect pair of nude, platform pumps.  I made mental notes on how the scene would go down if I was able to take action:

“Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?” 

“Uh, no officer, what did I do wrong?” 

“Sir, your wife just dropped about $5,000 on exquisite designer shoes and you’re wearing a gross track suit.” 

“Oh, yeah, I guess I am.” 

“You are, and it has stain on it.” 

“I’m sorry, officer, I don’t know what I was thinking.” 

“Well, despite being rich, you’re clearly lazy and have very bad taste.” 

“You’re absolutely right, officer.” 

“I know I am.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“Look, I’m going to give you a warning, but only because I don’t want to mess with your wife’s shoe budget.  Don’t let it happen again.”

4/8, 3 p.m., Tacky, too-tight t-shirts, Las Vegas Strip

Tight, rhinestone-bedazzled Celine Dion t-shirts in and of themselves are a misdemeanor, but when Celine’s face gets stretched beyond recognition across an egregious “muffin top,” the offense crosses over into fashion felony.  I can’t imagine why anyone would wear a t-shirt emblazoned with Celine Dion’s face.  Apparently my imagination doesn’t work very well because a rather large segment of the population seems quite proud to wear just that.  These crazy crooks will be sentenced to evening and weekend fashion school, where they will learn among other things, that giant, sugary, alcoholic beverages in containers shaped like the Eiffel Tower aren’t making their Celine-stretching muffin tops any better.

4/7, 11 p.m., Super sleazy cocktail dresses, The Chandelier Bar, Cosmopolitan (This violation repeated every night at every bar)

I need to hire a new sergeant to head up an entire unit dedicated to cracking down on this violation.  In addition to issuing citations and making arrests for particularly heinous slutty dress crimes, we’ll implement a public education campaign – “Be sexy.  Leave something to the imagination.”  To say that the vast majority of women in Las Vegas were not leaving anything to the imagination would be a gross understatement.  Breasts appeared to be spring-loaded into dresses at least two sizes too small and ready to violently explode from them at any moment.  Butt-cheeks peeked out from underneath hemlines Daisy-Duke style, which is a questionable phenomenon even in the world of shorts, but dresses?  Come on.  The sleazy dress crime spree reached a fever-pitch on April 7 at The Chandelier, where I observed a dress riding up so high that at least the bottom third of the woman’s ass was hanging out, and slipping down so low that her areola were exposed.  I’m not even sure where these itty-bitty dresses are coming from.  Is there a Slutty Dress Barn chain that I’m not aware of or an insidious segment of the black market?  (“I’ll take one kidney, a third world child bride and two super slutty dresses.  A briefcase of unmarked bills will be dropped on the pedestrian bridge at Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana.”)  Seriously, some of these women could have just put on pasties and a g-string and called it good.  Actually, I began to suspect that a good percentage of the slutty-dress wearers probably were off-duty strippers.  But even if you’re a stripper, you should only dress like one when you’re on the job.  The common sense rule is this: If you have to keep tugging it up or pulling it down, it doesn’t fit.  Please don’t wear it.  There, I asked nicely.  Next time I’ll haul your scantily-clad ass down to the station.

4/6, 9 p.m., Clothes clones, Bond, Cosmopolitan (This violation also repeated every night at every bar)

Clone clothing is a fashion crime wave of alarming proportions.  The perplexing propensity for adult women to dress like identical twins is sweeping the city.  Groups of female friends are showing up to bars, restaurants and clubs, dressed in identical outfits.  I encountered an example of this phenomenon up-close one evening at Bond.  A clothing clone gang sat together, wearing nearly identical tiny black strapless dresses, laughing at the equally tiny and equally identical dresses of other gangs with zero irony.  As if one ridiculously sleazy cocktail dress wasn’t disconcerting enough, now they are appearing in creepy masses à la Hitchcock’s Birds.  The laws are clear – dressing exactly like your friend or partner is only cute if you are an 80-year-old married couple or 8-year-old best-friends-forever.  

So there you have it, just a few examples of illegal fashion activities that are happening on a regular basis in Las Vegas.  While I observed many different fashion crimes during my undercover mission, my reaction was always the same.  I desperately wanted to pull the offenders aside and let them in on a little secret:  “Yes, people are staring at you, but it isn’t because you look good.”

I should note that I also observed some fantastic fashion on my trip to Las Vegas – gorgeous and inspiring clothes, styled and worn by people who both respect the classics and are savvy enough to push the envelope without breaking the law.  Based on my initial investigation, I’m undecided about whether to reassemble a Fashion Police team or just consider it “mission impossible.”  After all, Las Vegas is known for all kinds of shady behavior.  I suppose one shouldn’t expect fashion to be any different.  Let’s just hope the fashion that happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas.