I have just written a preview of the Apple iPhone over on the Lasoo Reviews page and now have a formal announcement to make.

The announcement is that I am done talking about it for now and will not mention it again until the iPhone raises someone from the dead or finds a cure for cancer.

I am thoroughly sick of hearing about the iPhone and this is coming from someone who was really into it when it first came out in the US a while back. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a neat little gadget and I would happily use one myself. But when you stop and take stock and realise that a mobile phone has essentially been the leading story on news bulletins for the last couple of days, you really have to wonder about the state of our society.

Why do people today get so obsessed with bright, shiny things? I call this “magpie syndrome” and it also affects anyone who camps out to see the fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Also people who cause traffic jams when they rush out en masse to gawk at large international cruise ships when they park in Sydney Harbour overnight.

And speaking of camping out… who are these people who camped out for the iPhone? Is there really nothing more important you could be doing, like… oh I don’t know… sleeping, or watching infomercials and demolishing an entire cask of Mozelle. Either of these activities would be preferable to lying in the middle of the street awaiting the arrival of a mobile phone.

The only thing you would ever catch me camping out for is… actually, I can’t think of one single item I would ever camp out for. I enjoy being comfortable and dignified too much.

By Caroline Warnes

I’ve always had a vague knowledge of the fetish shoes pictured here but it’s slowly been dawning on me that these monstrosities are crossing into the public eye.

I was at the gym this morning, gawping slack-jawed at the TV when I realised that Rihanna actually DANCES AROUND in these shoes in that one song she sings about the umbrella. (Yes, I realise that song is about two years old and I am a bit slow on the uptake.)

After a little bit of Google research this morning, I discovered that Rihanna isn’t alone in her love of stupid shoes. Apparently Beyonce made a film clip last year too in which she wears these shoes (which are actually Christian Louboutins, by the way). You can see the video clip here - the shoes put in an appearance just after the one minute mark.

Unfortunately Beyonce is no Rihanna and can’t even walk unassisted in the damn things, requiring a rope over her head even to shuffle along in a line. This seems to suggest that the shoes would be practical in a limited number of scenarios where you can hang onto a railing, including standing on a bus and walking along the perimeter of a cow paddock.

Now I understand these were originally intended as fetish shoes. Which raises several questions, including “what exactly is this fetish?” and “will I be able to eat my lunch afterwards if I Google it now”. And I also understand that just because Louboutin has made a pair and Beyonce has worn them it doesn’t mean we’ll soon all be wearing them to work.

However I do think that these shoes need to go back where they belong: behind closed doors. Perhaps I missed something but I always stupidly assumed that shoes should facilitate walking, not hinder it. And mangled foot bones are never sexy, unless you have been teleported from 15th century China.

By Caroline Warnes

Walking to work this morning in Sydney’s lovely rainy, windy and generally cold weather, I was confronted with one of the worst cases ever of clothes-related wrongness.

Strolling towards me as if walking the beaches of Tahiti, who should I see but a woman wearing a singlet top. Now I am no wowser when it comes to wearing singlet tops - in summer. But we are in the middle of a cold and rainy winter.

But there could be a reasonable explanation for the singlet top debacle, I hear you say. Perhaps she had just flown in from the Tropics or is some sort of bionic woman. I would argue that neither of these things were the case as thrown around her neck in a jaunty fashion was a woollen scarf.

In other words, this lady stood in front of her mirror this morning and thought, “hmmm, it looks cold outside… better wear my woollen scarf”. She didn’t consider wearing a jumper. Or a coat. Or even a FRICKING T-SHIRT. No, she somehow decided that this one scarf was going to be enough to keep her warm in the middle of winter. Perhaps it is some sort of magical scarf, but I doubt it. She was doing the fashion hokey-pokey - one foot in winter and one foot in summer.

The fashion hokey-pokey really bugs me, not just because I am an a crotchety old crank but also because it looks stupid and makes the rest of us feel cold in winter/hot in summer/generally confused about what season it is.

Yet another example of the fashion hokey-pokey is when ugg boots are worn with a mini-skirt. Ugg boots should not be worn out of the house FULL STOP, unless you are trying to be Pamela Anderson (in which case you should rethink your life goals), but if you must, please don’t wear them like this.

Why people deliberately want to uglify themselves is beyond me.

By Caroline Warnes

Am I the only one who is sick of the upcoming “Sex and the City” movie already?

The stupid thing hasn’t even come out yet and already it’s hitting me in the face at every turn - in magazines, on TV and on my beloved gossip websites.

Being the consumers’ paradise that it is, my local Westfield has also succumbed to “Sex fever” (that’s an awesome term! I’m copyrighting it!) and is offering two free tickets to the opening screening with gift card purchases of $100 or more, including champagne and canapes on arrival then a screening of the movie.

My inital thought was, keep the champagne and canapes, lose the movie and I might show up.

Apart from watching the occasional re-run on Foxtel while waiting for “Law & Order” to start, my care factor about Carrie and her gang of rabid “single and sassy” women has always been pretty much close to zero but now with the “Sex and the City” publicity machine shifting into high gear I’m seriously moving into annoyance territory.

As a city-dwelling single woman myself, I often wonder if people think we’re all as sassy and exciting as the “Sex and the City” floosies. Personally, I’ve never met anyone who has that lifestyle of cocktails and numerous men hanging around. Even if I did I would most likely be insanely jealous and therefore hate them.

But what about the groundbreaking fashion, I hear you say? Granted, there were some pretty exciting fashion moments in the TV series, but aren’t we over the whole dressing like a cashed-up bag lady thing? Isn’t it all a bit 1999?

And from the stills I’ve seen of the movie, it looks like someone’s trying too hard to push the fashion envelope. Newsflash: fashion moments are usually better when they aren’t forced.

A case in point:

What is this? Since when did it become acceptable to get married with a dead bird stuck to your head?

That has to be the least radiant bride I have ever seen.

By Caroline Warnes

Celebrities have already come out with perfumes and clothing lines, so why not hospital scrubs? Because it’s damn stupid, that’s why not.

I first heard about actress Katherine Heigl coming out with a range of hospital scrubs some months ago but it was only recently while visiting a relative in hospital that I started thinking about the whole stupid concept.

According to the website for the Katherine Heigl Collection, “when Peaches Uniforms approached Katherine about a possible venture into designing medical uniforms, she was honoured and excited because this meant she would explore another creative field outside of acting”. Now call me naive but how does being an actress (and not even a particularly good one at that) somehow mean you can design hospital scrubs?

Jennifer Lopez is the queen of giving herself too much credit. She gets locked in a car boot with George Clooney in a mediocre film and dances around in her underwear in a couple of film clips and suddenly she is a fashion designer/perfume maven/restaurant owner/President of the United States.

I think Katherine Heigl is under the impression that she is somehow qualified to design medical uniforms because she plays a doctor on “Grey’s Anatomy”. Or a nurse. I don’t know which one as I don’t actually watch the show. However I have heard her character is pretty annoying. In fact this whole medical scrubs debacle just made Katherine Heigl about ten times more annoying to me. I mean come on Katherine. Give us boob tube junkies a bit of credit. Most of us worked out that people who play doctors on TV can’t actually perform medical procedures, deliver babies or prescribe us pills soon after the Doogie Howser M.D. era.

Onto the uniforms themselves. Now I am not a doctor or a nurse (no really) but should your scrubs really be costly designer apparel? Patients in hospital lose control of their bodily functions. They throw up on you. There’s lots of blood. And more. The point of scrubs is that they are supposed to be low-cost disposable items. Some of the scrubs in the Katherine Heigl collection almost look good enough to wear out on the town.

Hmm. Actually that gives me an idea.

By Caroline Warnes

Yesterday I received the latest issue of Shop Til You Drop magazine in the mail and after looking at the cover, I found myself irrationally angered by the cover image of Lindsay Lohan.

Now don’t get me wrong, STYD is a good magazine with some great shopping tips in it, and I don’t usually fly into a rage over their choice of cover star. It was just this particular photo of Ms Lohan really triggered something in me.

I am so sick of Lindsay Lohan and I don’t understand why anyone is interested in seeing or hearing about her anymore, let alone reading about her style in a shopping magazine. Because let’s face it, she has none.

I am not just referring to her well-documented bad behaviour, though that is a big part of it. Multiple trips to rehab, drink driving incidents, drug scandals and sex tapes, all before she reached the age of 21 - definitely not stylish. However add to that the fact that her look is just - well - tired, and I am seriously having issues wondering why anyone would go out and buy something in a magazine just because La Lohan wore it.

A few reasons why I am sick of Lindsay Lohan:

1. I am not the first person to note that she has barely been seen out of a pair of leggings in the past 12 months. I am not a big fan of leggings at the best of times, but wearing them every day is beyond ridiculous. One has to wonder, does she have a whole wardrobe full of black leggings, or is it the same pair? Does she ever take them off? Are they chemically fused to her legs? If she was in a car accident would they need to be cut off with surgical instruments? Note to Lindsay Lohan: at least put on a skirt over your leggings. They’re not pants. They’re leggings. Hence the name.

2. The infamous Lohan dirty face. I really want to grab a face washer and clean it for her. Another note to Lindsay Lohan: if you’re going to put fake tan on your face, you should also scrub off some of the layers occasionally. It makes you look at least twice your age.

3. That insipid blonde-coloured hair she insists on getting around with. It’s all a bit last decade, really. In fact I’m almost sure she took in a photo of the entire cast of Models,Inc to her hairdresser last time for a copycat colour and cut. She used to have a really lovely natural auburn colour. Why not embrace it?

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s time for the media to realise that celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and the like no longer have a place on our fashion and shopping pages - if we must hear about them at all, let’s save it for the gossip rags where we can all experience a healthy dose of schadenfreude as we read about their latest personal misfortunes.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

By Caroline Warnes

You always hear that there are a lot of crazies on the Internet and one site I stumbled across yesterday is a brutal reminder of that fact.

Kitty Wigs is site based in the US (of course) that sells - as the name suggests - hair pieces for cats.

Browsing through the site yesterday afternoon I had one of those experiences where you can’t help but snigger out loud even though you’re in the midst of a quiet office. I thought I would be over it by today but no, the pictures are still having the same effect on me.

For the low low price of $US50 (plus $25 shipping) your cat can have one of these attractive wigs to wear for special occasions, or even just for around the house.

There is the Bashful Blonde version, pictured here, which is apparently “a magical mix of bashful and brazen. (The wig) shows off the many moods of a natural blonde: sweet yet catty, smart yet batty - where life is alluring and coy. Now all she needs is a bikini and a Swedish accent.”

Worried about how your cat will look in a bikini? You shouldn’t be, because apparently the blonde cat wig will also make your pet look more tanned. Phew. I’m sure my cat would hate to think that the other cats are laughing about her lack of tan.

Or if your cat is more the “elegant, modern and quintessentially feline” type, you could try the Pink Passion wig (nevermind that your animal will look like she is channelling Britney Spears in her meltdown phase). Or else you can try the electric blue or white wigs. Heck, why not try them all?

Dog owners need not despair: you too can alienate your pet by making it wear a wig. Wiggles Wigs has a whole selection for canines. My personal favourite is Yappy Hour. That chihuahua seriously looks like it’s ready to kill someone. Some of these wigs are also giving me disturbing flashbacks to the evil clown in Stephen King’s IT.

So in conclusion, the next time I urgently need to get rid of $50 and I am bored of flushing money down the toilet or using it to light cigars, I will definitely consider ordering my cat her very own wig.

By Caroline Warnes

I try to remain open-minded about most fashion and beauty trends. However there are certain trends that have made a reappearance in recent times that I want absolutely no part of. Mainly because I saw them up close and personal the first time around.

1. Ray-Ban Wayfarers

I know a lot of people loved their Ray-Ban Wayfarers the first time around back in the 1980s. In fact, some people loved them so much that they didn’t realise they went out of fashion for a good 20 years. However I am going to go out on a limb here and say that Wayfarers don’t suit approximately 90 percent of the population.

Lately we’ve seen them on everyone from the Olsen twins to Sienna Miller as well as your average fashion plate on the street. However no matter which celebrities try to tell me that Wayfarers are cool again, you will not catch me wearing them.

You see, everytime I think of Wayfarers, I think of Tom Cruise prancing around the house in his underwear in Risky Business and I cringe. I just can’t get that association out of my head. Add that to the fact that the shape of the glasses is unflattering on most faces and to me you have a no-go zone for most of us.

2. Head-to-toe fluoro

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was slightly confused to hear that fluoro clothing (yet another 80s throwback) is making a comeback. Weren’t we making fun of that sort of thing fairly recently? Well at least I know I was.

The trend started in the summer 2007 collections with the likes of Christopher Kane and now has trickled down to most chain stores to the point where it’s impossible to hit your local Westfield sans sunglasses. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but there’s still an awful lot of fluoro clothing going around.

For me, even a little bit of fluoro is too much.

3. High-waisted jeans

Moving onto making fun of clothes from another era: let’s talk high-waisted jeans. I don’t have much to say on this trend except that if even Kate Moss can’t make something look good, chances are nobody can.

I prefer mid-rise jeans for most body shapes: they’re high enough to cover everything that should be covered when you sit down and low enough to give your armpits some breathing room.

4. Grunge

Ah yes, anyone who came of age in the 80s or 90s is sure to remember the era of grunge dressing. In my world of mid-1990s Sydney it came watered down as flannel shirts, scuffed sneakers and corduroy pants, preferably unwashed. After all, who had time to do a load of washing with all that angst and pain to suffer. If you went to see a band play you might even get lucky and see some hipster wearing a tu-tu and knee-high stripey socks.

While this trend hasn’t come back overwhelmingly we have seen whispers of it in some recent collections, particularly at New York Spring Fashion Week earlier this year (Marc Jacobs is a repeat offender). Personally, I’m hoping the whole thing stays back in the 90s, where it belongs.

5. Doc Martens

Well, really Doc Martens are an extension of the grunge factor. Back in the day every grunge fanatic and their dog had a pair of these heavy boots, modelled on army all-terrain boots.

I was a bit scared to hear from friends in the UK that Doc Martens are becoming popular again. This gives me bad memories of clunking around in my first pair of Docs back at highschool on a summer day and nearly dying of heatstroke. It wasn’t until a few years later that I realised how ridiculous I probably looked.

In fact I would be quite happy if I never saw a pair of Doc Martens again!

By Caroline Warnes