A Jane-Inspired Rant on the Nature of Talent...and Uggs

From Jane’s fashion editorial “Great White,” March:

It’s almost eerie how these eight emerging talents with amazing personal style are all obsessing over the ethereal white dress right now.

Eerie, indeed, if you consider a stylist dressing eight women in white dresses to be a strange coincidence.

And who might these “emerging talents” be?  While we have no argument with featuring the likes of designer Erin Fetherston or Kate Sennert (editor-in-chief of Tokion), we have to question the inclusion of Molly Hanrahan, age 24.  Her claim to greatness?

What she does: Casting agent for MTV reality shows

Oh, right, because it takes tremendous skill and vision to find promiscuous alcoholics to appear on The Real World.

The “emerging talent” featured on page 121 is even more ludicrous.  Guess who?  It’s Jane’s own Stephanie Trong!  How very self-congratulatory of Jane! How fortuitous that the magazine employs someone qualified to appear in its very own photo shoot!

Here are Stephanie’s intriguing thoughts on fashion:

“Stylistically, I love hippie girls—like the ragtag ones who will throw on anything,” Stephanie says.  “The dress I’m wearing here is really special, because I’m posing with the designer, Catherine.  I was accosting her throughout the shoot, ‘cause I need to buy it.  It’s so innocent.  I can’t wait to wear it in the summer with moccasin booties.”

So the dress is only special because the designer is right next to her?  Somehow, we don’t think that’s what she meant to say. 

Note to Jane: posing your models flat on their backs in tall grass doesn’t exactly show off the clothes to their best advantage.  Note to Stephanie: Moccasin booties?  That’s a joke, right?  We hate moccasin booties as much as we hate Uggs, and we loathe Uggs because we live in L.A. where every time the temperature dips below 65, the entire population of under-21s switches out flip-flops for Uggs instead of just, you know, putting on some jeans, and you can’t leave the house without encountering a phalanx of college students in their ridiculous uniforms of denim minis, tanks, Uggs, and scarves.  Scarves!  With tank tops!  Has everyone gone mad?

Anyway.  We know not to expect much from Jane.  We can’t possibly agree with them on the merits of every single woman they feature in the magazine, but we don’t hate Drew Barrymore.  So, feeling optimistic (and generous, might we add), we headed to the magazine’s website, supposing perhaps Jane might redeem itself with the April issue.  Wishful thinking, we realized, when we learned that Avril Lavigne is on the cover.  We can only hope they selected her for the cover solely because her name means “April” in French.

So we’re going to back up a step and reconsider our earlier opinion.  If Avril Lavigne is Jane’s idea of established talent, we’ll take the “emerging” stars any day.  Hey, we bet that woman who casts for MTV can even clue us in on a great place to have a drink.  Now that’s a useful skill.  Promoting “ragtag,” “hippie” fashion?  Not much of a talent, if you ask us.