Aloha there, boys and girls. Welcome to another installment of the best thing to happen to Sunday since Doug went off the air, your very favorite Sunday Supplements. Now let me open this by acknowledging the obvious: wrestling fans generally seem to know as much about fashion as they do about, say, particle physics. Believe me when I tell you that I am certainly in that group as well. But over the years the wrestling industry has created some of the most obscene crimes against eyes that anyone has ever dared to wear, and its time we all had ourselves a chuckle over it. From tassels to the tightest tights to bizarre animal heads to colors that would blind Sauron, there is so much to choose from that half the fun of a list like this is realizing how many awful selections didn’t even make it on.
So with that in mind, I have called in our resident fashion expert Mrs. Cewsh and together we’ll do our very best Tom and Lorenzo imitation in selecting the 10 looks that even Lady Gaga would giggle at and break down just what in the fuck they were thinking.
Cewsh: To kick off this list of things that made us facepalm harder than a English teacher in a chat room, we have the priceless treasure that is the video of Vince McMahon’s dynamic singing performance of Stand Back at the 1987 Slammy Awards ceremony. There’s so much to cover here that I can’t even imagine a large enough space in which to break it all down. Putting aside how amazing it is that Vince McMahon held an entire ceremony just so he could perform at it, the fashion choices shown here is just breathtaking.
So let me bring in our resident fashion expert Mrs. Cewsh at this point to get us started. Madam Cewsh?
Mrs. Cewsh: Well I wouldn’t say I’m an expert. Just, personally able to see that if you’re wearing a pink suit, complete with tie-dyed shirt and matching pink bandanna as your formal attire, perhaps you’ve made a wrong decision today.
Jesse Ventura starts off the video wearing just that. Now I would say that you can wear a t-shirt with a jacket for an event like the Slammys, but you must forgo the vest. Otherwise you look sloppy.
Not fashion related, but Jimmy Hart has not aged one single day since this video was shot. It’s remarkable.
When we cut to the performance, it’s an assault to the senses. Hulk Hogan is playing bass and wearing a sleeveless tuxedo, complete with tails. With sleeves he would be woefully overdressed. Without them, he is wearing a SLEEVELESS TUXEDO.
The dancers are all wearing enormously poofy lamé skirts paired with what appear to be velvet bodices and huge, ruffled necklines. Even for the 80s, they are truly hideous.
And then there’s Vince. Poor, sweet Vince McMahon in his pink shirt with the giant collar. The pants and vest are actually nicely tailored from what I can see. Unfortunately, the outfit looks like it’s from the height of disco, a problem in 1987.
Add in whatever Macho Man and Beefcake are wearing and it’s an orgy of 80s tackiness. There’s no saving any of it. Whenever someone suggests that 80s fashion is making a comeback, I will direct them here.
Cewsh: Also of note are a shirtless Junkyard Dog playing the saxophone (which was apparently the only instrument black men were allowed to play in the 80s) and Jake Roberts in a bad suit standing next to a fully decked out Savage and Beefcake, clearly wondering if he overdressed. This video is only 3 minutes long, but it may contain more fashion atrocities than a hippie jam band festival.
And this is ONLY NUMBER TEN HOLY SHIT WHAT
Cewsh: Next up on our list that proves that wrestlers have the fashion sense of concussed water buffaloes, is Rey Mysterio. Now we all know that we could have chosen from a dozen different looks on this one. The Joker ridiculousness comes to mind. But this one made the list for being just so horribly, heinously awful and lazy.
Mrs. Cewsh: Rey’s costumes are crazy, but in that great cracked out way. Unfortunately, he forgot any of the fun with this one. I will never understand that sky blue camo, in theory or in this outfit. It’s probably supposed to look like the stripes, but it doesn’t. The braid is an afterthought. The mask looks more like a cat than a Na’vi. Wholly unsatisfying.
Cewsh: The worst part is that if you took the braid away, not one person on Earth would identify this with the movie Avatar. They would just think he stepped off the set of a 70’s themed midget porno. Which is perhaps one of the only instances where something 12 inches long every made anything less porntastic.
Cewsh: …wow.
Okay, um, yeah. So this one requires a bit of elaboration. Noted 90s cat enthusiast Dean Peters created the character of Battle Kat in the WWF and may actually be the only person ever to go undefeated their entire WWF career. Granted this lasted about one month, but hey, he was undefeated and Goldberg wasn’t. Of course, perhaps the REASON he was undefeated is tied up in how distracted his opponents were from looking at the man in the super bright and way too tight spandex that made him look like a clown stripper halfway through his act.
Mrs. Cewsh: Isn’t it ironic that Rey’s Na’vi mask looks more catlike than Battle Kat’s? Those are definitely mouse ears.
Boys, let’s have a little discussion on proportion. For women, the general rule is you can show off your chest, or you can show off your legs, as long as the outfit fits and covers all exposure laws. Mr. Kat desperately needs to go up at least two sizes in his singlet and decide if he’d rather show nip or junk. You can’t do both.
Secondly, this color combination. It’s not harmonious or particularly pleasing. Orange and purple are pretty dominant colors, though they could work together if the purple was more pure and used as a more sparing accent. The inclusion of green would make it a triad, and while it would be vibrant and undeniably 90s, perhaps an all orange singlet with purple and green cat stripes at the hips would have been the way to go.
Cewsh: See, that’s why we have Mrs. Cewsh as our official Cewsh Reviews fashion consultant. She knows so much about color triads and appropriate fabric distribution that Tim Gunn considers her a mentor. Whereas i’m a colorblind, 20 something man who thought that cashmere was some kind of vitamin until depressingly recently. But even I feel qualified to say that if Vince McMahon walks up to you and tells you to put on your little sister’s gymnastics outfit and a gigantic Maxi Pad in order to portray a threatening cat warrior, that’s probably something you should say no to.
Cewsh: Look, I love Bull Nakano as much as the next Joshi lover. She’s tough, she’s bad and she has a flair for the dramatic that borders on ridiculous. But come on now, this strays overly the line straight into crazy person territory. The Marge Simpson meet Kid and Play hair, the crazy face makeup, the coat that would have shamed a prissy Victorian lord and the ruffles. THERE ARE SO MANY RUFFLES.
Mrs. Cewsh: There are so many ruffles because Bull is amazing. There’s nothing wrong with this look, except I would have advised pants. They would have covered the knee brace and kept this more period appropriate.
I applaud her decision not to go too matchy with the hair, face paint, and coat. That shows a sophisticated taste level that keeps the look from being costumey. I supposed I must quibble and say the hair color looks a bit spotty. Dear should fire her colorist.
All in all, brava.
Cewsh: I’m not sure that I can, in good conscience, suggest that AQUA is a hair color that will ever work on any human being with skin, though it might possibly be fetching on the Jello people from the Delicious nebula.
I also have to question just why exactly she has chosen to be a pirate for this occasion. Were Japanese pirates a big thing? Did she rob some War of 1812 reenactors? Was her plan to just swing into the ring, steal the title and flee into the night? Because if any of that is true, I totally take this back and this is an awesome costume.
Cewsh: Okay, we’re going to have to tackle this one piece by tacky piece, one member at a time. Let’s start with the patriarch himself, Dusty Rhodes.
Now rumor has it that the legendary polka dot outfit was given to him as a rib by Vince McMahon after Dusty came to him for a job, post NWA firing. I don’t know if this is true or not, but in all honesty just the fact that someone gave Dusty Rhodes a shirt is some of the most inspired thinking in wrestling history. Unfortunately they ran out of material, resulting in tights so short that they often disappeared under the shirt and made it look like Dusty was wearing nearly nothing at all, and that doesn’t bear thinking about.
Mrs. Cewsh: I don’t think shorts is quite the word for Dusty’s bottoms. Those are clearly bikini cut panties.
I just think this look is all too much. Unlike Bull, there’s no variation. He doesn’t play with shades or patterns or textures. Black with yellow polka dot top, bottoms, headband, elbow pad, knee pads, with matching yellow and black wrist bands. White tape, white hair, white and yellow boots.
I think neutral accessories, plain black pads and no headband to start would go a long way. I’d lengthen the shorts to mid thigh. Then, I’d tone down the hair color. That shade of platinum ages a man. Finally, white boots are rarely good idea. Black with a pop of color on the sides; maybe a gold bee since this combination of yellow and black should be reserved for yellow jackets.
Cewsh: We are in agreement. White boots should be a crime punishable by having to take a shower with Dusty Rhodes.
Alright, now on to the fruit of his loins (which should be producing terrific mental images at this point). First let’s start with the youngest, and the least heinous offender of the group, Cody Rhodes.
Cewsh: I feel like at some point Cody Rhodes decided that the less clothes he wore, the better wrestler he’d be. Which is fine since he has roughly 800 abs, but dear god, imagine if his father and brother had taken that philosophy.
Much has been made of the lack of knee pads that he was known for. But honestly, its the creamsicle tights and the GODDAMN WHITE BOOTS that invoke the wrath of Cewsh here. And for fuck’s sake, is there some kind of cream he could put on his eyes so he doesn’t look like he’s 3 weeks into the Black Death or something?
Mrs. Cewsh: Cewsh has covered it all. He looks like a dreamscicle with the orange tights and white boots. And since I would like to lick him about as much as I’d like a dreamscicle, there’s nothing wrong here.
He needs knee pads, another elbow pad, and black boots. And a design on the tights. This is awfully amateur hour.
Cewsh: But of course, that was just the warm up. I’m not even going to pick on the Goldust character here, because wacky outfits were part of the gimmick. Besides, why go for a flamboyant cross dresser when you can have a rhinestone cowboy?
Cewsh: This outfit is so bad that my eyes rebel from looking at it. I think they might be orchestrating a strike as we speak.
Mrs. Cewsh: I’m at a loss for words.
No wait, here are some. Your hair is so bleached it’s going to fall out and you’re clearly only 15. I’ve never seen so much satin and sequins, and I grew up in the 90s. And I was a girl. I was a flower girl. With full length sleeves and a sequined bodice. And clearly some trauma regarding this event.
Dustin Rhodes is triggering bad memories of 90s weddings. I hope he’s happy.
Cewsh: The outfit can only be considered an outright act of aggression, so i’m certain he is.
Finally, let’s take a moment to acknowledge the achievements in style of a woman who nearly has a hat trick in terms of bedding this ridiculous family. The fabulous Terri Runnels. More specifically, her role as noted computer expert Alexandra York. What did computer experts look like in the early 90s? Well…
Mrs. Cewsh: Whatever, this is the best Terri ever looked. I think the glasses are just so fabulous.
This is another case of over accessorizing. If the dress wasn’t full length green satin with a tortured green satin jacket and a bracelet and a watch and a necklace and chandelier earrings and glasses and the big computer/purse, it could be worked into a stylish, (for the 80s,) outfit.
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