Why Mrs Muscat’s outfit is badly made and doesn’t work

Published: April 8, 2013 at 1:38am

You can tell this is a subject which interests me, right? There are many ways in which the PM’s wife’s suit is badly made and doesn’t work, but I’ll stick to some of the technicalities of construction.

The Dolce & Gabbana original is made from unlined lace. One’s underwear is meant to be on display. When lining is sewn into the lace itself, the ‘engineering’ of the outfit is changed completely.

The weight and fall of the fabric changes. It becomes another fabric altogether. And an entirely different outfit.

To keep the engineering of the Dolce & Gabbana original, but at the same time conceal your underwear, you would have to wear undergarments that are detached from the suit itself: a half-slip and a vest, for instance.

But if you’re going to want to conceal your pants, bra or nakedness, it’s best to avoid this outfit altogether and opt for something else, as it is designed to be revealing and doesn’t work any other way.

The jacket is fastened with concealed studs, not buttons and buttonholes. The buttons are decorative. With unlined lace, this is necessary because you can’t put buttonholes into it – well, you can, but there’s a lot of hand-finishing involved and it’s hellish and time-consuming.

But studs work with lace because it’s lightweight. Once you’ve lined the lace, however, you have a problem. The fabric immediately becomes too heavy for studs, causing a warped outline in a seated position – but still you can’t use buttonholes because the problem of cutting and edging the lace remains.

The combination of weighty fabric, studs and rounded hips causes the jacket to ride up when the wearer is seated, increasing the warping between lapel and waist (see photographs below).

The Dolce & Gabbana original is designed for a long upper torso – there are six buttons – and stops short over non-existent hips. Mrs Muscat has a very short upper torso that can only take three decorative buttons compared to the model’s six. To compound the engineering problems, the dressmaker has understood that a jacket which stops just clear of the waist is a bad idea for Mrs Muscat’s figure, so has added some length with an open front which is intended to stop the jacket riding up when Mrs Muscat sits down, but does not.

Three studs set precisely beneath the three decorative buttons are not enough to keep a jacket made of heavy material securely closed. So the studs have been dispersed between the buttons and not beneath them, making the side view, especially in a seated position, even worse.

MeShallLookGoodInThat

photo 1

photo 2

photo 3

photo 4

photo 5




38 Comments Comment

  1. H.P. Baxxter says:

    Then there’s the shoes.

    As for little Mussolini, that button will maim someone one of these days. Perhaps a foreign head of state. Wars have begun that way.

  2. Harry Purdie says:

    Last pic, if I were in such momentous situation, I would be holding the hand of my beloved wife, not ‘manipulating’ my thumbs.

    We have here, one hell of a cold fish.

  3. Gahan says:

    With a little imagination I think I can see Michelle’s underwear in the last photo.

    There was fashion expert Marisa Grima on TV who said that the best dressed was the young PN MP Krista Debono while the PM’s wife looked fabulous!

    http://tvm.com.mt/news/2013/04/the-good-the-passable-the-not-in-parliament/

  4. bookworm says:

    And she still thinks that the handbag has to match the outfit and shoes.

  5. Tim Ripard says:

    Ace Galizia – Fashion Detective, or should that be Fraud Detective? Either way, eat your heart out Jim.

  6. caflanga says:

    Mrs Muscat’s cunning plan to fool the public that she has dress sense and that she can afford a D&G has been bombed.

    She should take lessons in Machiavellianism from the husband, who’s orchestration of the whole ceremony was meant to ice the Blues, like the colour of his tie.

  7. Grezz says:

    On a different note – Joseph Muscat has a particularly cold, nasty, calculating look in the photo before the last.

  8. Grezz says:

    Your observations, on the other hand, are correct, down to the littlest of details.

  9. Grezz says:

    Another thing – the skirt is way too tight for Mrs Muscat, causing it to ride up and crease horizontally even as she walks. Tsk, tsk.

  10. Last Post says:

    Fil-hwejjeg u l-hjata ma nifhimx. Fil-body language kapaci naqra xi haga …

    Mamma mia, wicc Joseph kwazi jbezzghani. Ghandu wisq mill-harsa u l-poza ta’ Mussolini. Xi haga fil-fond tieghi tghidli li x-xebh mad-dittatur Taljan imur lil’hinn minn wiehed sempliciment fiziku.

    Maaaaa, tal-biza’ – ‘really scary’ kif jghidu llum.

  11. Sowerberry says:

    Ah, the peek a boo or keyhole effect.

  12. Sowerberry says:

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130408/local/gwu-using-labour-victory-to-paoch-members.464590

    GWU poaching MUBE members on pretext of better deal with MLP in government.

  13. La Redoute says:

    She spared us the lace ankle socks.

  14. jojo says:

    Meta ma tafx ma tafx, no amount of money or power puts THAT right.

  15. Simon says:

    Her suit is as crude as her ross fil-forn.

  16. ciccio says:

    So the Dolce & Gabbana original is made from unlined lace whilst Mrs. Muscat has had lining sewn on the inside of her copy.

    Nothing new here. Labour is transparent only in appearance. And it is only a fake.

  17. Aunt Hetty says:

    Joe Muscat’s Mussolini -like pugnacious expression becomes more evident with every passing day.

  18. Me again says:

    Actually, there is at least one stud in between those buttons. Look at the close-up photo – if there wasn’t a stud in between buttons 2 and 3 there would have been a much larger ‘keyhole’.

  19. lea says:

    Another very important detail, women’s jackets are supposed to close right on left not the other way round!

    [Daphne – See previous posts.]

  20. Jozef says:

    Then there’s the weight of the lace. Dolce e Gabbana’s may be Chantilly, but Muscat’s is a much heavier thread, looks like cotton.

    The model also seems to be wearing an organza-sleeved undergarment, pinched at the sides to ruffle the waist.

    There’s no comparison between the collars. Whereas the original lacks structure purposefully, Muscat’s has been trained out of its nature.

    Materia, that which interfaces the soul’s decrees to physical nature, and Labour, don’t mix.

    I’d love to see her try a Capucci.

    http://masterluxuryfashionmanagement.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/roberto_capucci1.jpg

    • H.P. Baxxter says:

      There’s no comparison between the models either. But that would be an attakk fahxi, so I shall desist.

  21. Athina says:

    The fact that the dress is trimmed in black does not mean she had to have black accessories. The shoes especially look too frumpy.

  22. Karl Flores says:

    The saying is that the men’s jackets were meant to have buttons, the way they are, since the times when they used their swords to fight. With the jacked closed the way it is meant to be, the fighters swords wouldn’t be obstructed by the edges of the jacket, where one side overlaps the other, when pulled out of their pouch held on the left side.

    • H.P. Baxxter says:

      There are different theories about the origin of left-over-right buttoning. What we do know is that by the time the convention was established, swords had long been discarded as gentlemen’s accessories.

      And the jacket was rarely buttoned, a convention that still holds today with a three-piece suit. In any case that’s what vents are for. With the earlier 17th century habit de cour, with a long waistcoat, the sword was still carried on a bandolier or sash.

      The upshot of it all is that Kenneth’s invitees at the Masque of the Pink Death had not one stitch of historically accurate clothing among them.

  23. kev says:

    Il-ahwa kemm tifhem fil-hjata, Deafley! Ghandi libsa tat-tieg tan-nanna tahseb tohrogli tnejn tal-maghmudija u ohra tal-precet, just in case jaghmluni nannu? Obligat, nann.

    [Daphne – Yes, actually, Kevin, I do know quite a lot about it. Doesn’t Sharon? It’s a useful skill. Or maybe you sew on your own buttons.]

  24. Blue says:

    I wonder if the handbag Michelle Muscat is carrying may be the famous most expensive gift?

  25. Francis Saliba MD says:

    Joseph Muscat in the fifth photograph from the top is a frightening resemblance of Benito Mussolini’s propaganda poster in his hey-day before he was summarily executed by Italian partisans while trying to escape to Switzerland and his corpse (and Clara Petacci’s) hung by their feet from a lamp post in Milan.

  26. Izzie says:

    Well, fine, here we go with a government filled with so many fakes.

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