By now, it’s a truism to say that clothes make a statement. But it’s, well, true.

And in this case, the statement is, “I don’t know how to dress myself.”

It’s not the hardest thing in the world to tie a tie. We suppose it’s fairly difficult compared to, say, combing your hair. If you’re having trouble, there are any number of websites and instructional pamphlets at your disposal. You could even print something out and paste it by your mirror to help you. But for the love of God, don’t start wearing it around your neck. It’s the semi-formal equivalent of a misspelled nametag.

Best of all, the website describes the tie’s 3-inch width as “Euro-chic.” Ah, sophistication…

George Carlin once said that America is good at two things: taking a good idea and running it completely into the ground and taking a bad idea and running it completely into the ground. We’re feeling charitable, so we’ll say this is a case of the former.

We like Takashi Murakami, and Marc Jacobs has been on his game lately, but their Monogramouflage pattern has officially reached the saturation point. This, for instance, is just embarrassing. Designed as a reader giveaway for Numero Tokyo, a Japanese high fashion mag, the mousepad may mark the moment when we got tired of the whole idea of luxury patterns.

That’s right. It’s a mousepad.

It’s no wonder Jacobs is trying to scale back the collaborations. If he isn’t careful, he may end up in the computer business.

This month’s Vanity Fair features a windy trot through the remains of Marilyn Monroe’s estate, in the name of unraveling the “mystery of Marilyn’s death.” There are a few Kennedy love letters, one from T.S. Eliot (!?), and a whole lot of morbid fetishism, courtesy of writer Sam Kashner. (The curious can find a full web-only accounting here.) Of course, the media loves a dead blonde, but this is more unseemly than usual.

Monroe’s death is only a mystery the way JFK’s death is a mystery. When a corpse is found surrounded by sleeping pills, you don’t have to reach too far for the truth. Monroe was an orphan, and struggled all her life with what Arthur Miller described (in a far superior VF article) as “the bottomless loneliness that no parented person can really know”, so her suicide not as inexplicable as Kashner would have us believe. The real shock is how blind most writers have been to her real, human problems.

We’re looking at you, Truman»

A Bad Idea is a Bad Idea is a Bad Idea: Proving once again, there is no bottom. [Daily Fiasco]

And Take Off Your Hat While You’re At It: Our favorite sports blogger gives us a user’s guide to the U. S. Open. The main point seems to be “sit your ass down.” Or something like that. [Daily Intel]

Breakfast at Christie’s: A Gawker alum summarizes a Christie’s auction…without calling anyone a douchebag. [RadarOnline]

Innner Tube: The creators of our new favorite show talk shop. (No, not The Wire. That was last month.) [AMC Blogs]

We’re giving our boy Takashi the benefit of the doubt here and assuming this is a knockoff.

Still, imagine the horrifying world we would enter if this sort of thing becomes common practice. So far the world of art and the world of things-you-can-imprint-on-your-jeans have remained blissfully separate. Nobody wants to see a formaldehyde-soaked shark sewn into your Levi’s. Pretty soon, that grungy-looking fellow with the paint-splattered chinos will be asking if you like his Pollocks.

Run, Banksy, run! Save yourself!

When times are tough, people tend to cut back on things that aren’t absolutely essential. For instance, the market for $500 tanning goggles is probably pretty shaky right now.

Sorry, Mr. Ford. This was a bad idea.

We’re all about creative materials, but this was a bad idea from the beginning.

We usually like wooden things—they can add warmth to a room, or a bit of wit to gadget design—but this one doesn’t work on either front. To recap for those who came in late, the purpose of a tie is to drape and/or hang. These polished logs aren’t going to do either; they’re just going to clack around stiffly every time you move.

Sherman’s March: Photographess Cindy Sherman takes pictures of herself throughout time, causing us to love her more than we thought possible. Damn you, Byrne! [Vulture]

Walk of Shame: Apparently W couldn’t get a handshake at the G20. We can’t imagine why. [Videogum]

The Shame Economy: Fixing the economy with national pride may be the wrong direction… [Gawker]

Trads in the Wild: The mustache and tucked neck tie are always a good idea. [We are the Market]

We love obscure hats more than most, but we draw the line at the fez. Making it taller and giving it a brim won’t change anything.

This one comes from the multi-culturally named Giuliano Fujiwara. Their summer line has some very solid shades, but somehow their flagship headpiece ended up looking like a collaboration between the shriners, the cossacks and the snowboarder crowd. In other words, a bad idea.

See the top hat fez in its natural habitat, a fashion show»

Anyone who’s passed through a multiplex has a good understanding of the rules of superheroism, but it’s usually confined to on-camera antics. And they’re usually somewhere a bit more glamorous than rural Arizona.

The most recent Rolling Stone has a quasi-exposé about the phenomenon of “reals,” grown men who don self-designed costumes to fight the forces of evil…which usually means local purse-snatchers and the occasional drug dealer.

We’re not going to fault them for doing a little amateur police work in their spare time, and a secret identity can come in handy for lots of reasons, but did they really need the costumes? Nobody questions the occasional good Samaritan, but when you start strapping on shin-guards and ordering a SUPRHRO vanity plate, you’ve gone too far. As the Dark Knight so memorably put it, “I’m not wearing hockey pants.”

Rolling Stone defends the Justice Force»

Making fun of high-fashion shows is usually pretty close to shooting fish in a barrel. They know it’s ridiculous; that’s the point. But while we’re willing to let the occasional rubber butcher outfit slide, we felt compelled to bring this particular Alexander McQueen outfit to light.

Usually, when you want to capture a thought in clothing form, you don’t want the thought to be “did he have chowder for lunch?”

Now that the cultural novelty of the iPod has worn off, we’re left with a lot of distant-looking people in public places. We aren’t suggesting you start talking to people on the subway—we’re not crazy—but disengaging from the world is rarely an attractive thing, and probably best kept private and unadvertised, like knitting or watching Heroes.

All of which means you’d do best to keep it off your tie.

It’s one of the less useful rules of style, but worth remembering: If you’re a rock star, you can get away with just about anything. There are still limits though, and these boots might just fall outside them.

Made for Justin Tranter of the Semi-Precious Weapons, they’re a size 12 with a patent leather model still in the works. We love glam rock as much as the next guy, but the trick is usually to come off like an androgynous alien, not a cross-dressing off-duty policeman.

And it’s not 1972 anymore.

Runway fashion is easy to mock… so what the hell, let’s give it a go.

Best Week Ever has summed up the S/S 09 runway season with a set of 25 models forced to dress outside any normal conception of dignity. There are a few missteps, particularly the inclusion of an impeccably dressed older gentleman, but otherwise it’s a pretty good census of the most ridiculous and downright off-putting getups to grace this year’s runways.

See our favorites»

You might think Fashion Week would be drama enough, but there’s always room for a little more.

FashionIndie President Daniel Saynt just cancelled all the site’s upcoming events, video premieres, and a good chunk of their Fashion Week coverage, and announced a lawsuit against the New York Observer. The lawsuit is in response to a catty lead paragraph from last week’s paper that called them out on crashing fashion week events…but don’t worry if things don’t quite add up. It’s not just you.

Frankly, we thought Saynt & Co. took pride in the occasional gatecrash, but calling off their own parties smacks of desperation and—even worse—thin skin. Calling in a lawyer is the weakest play in the book, and it’s simply not the blogger way. If you can’t take a jab or two from a broadsheet, how are you going to survive Gawker?

For goodness sakes, this is the internet.

Male corsets have been around for longer than we like to consider, and it’s no surprise that they’ve come up with more modern versions.

But a few things haven’t changed. A gut is a gut, and you’re always better off celebrating it. In Shakesperean times or today, a corset is a bad idea.

Your portfolio may be down the tubes, but we implore you not to follow it. Keep your composure when all about you are losing theirs! Remain kempt in the face of unkemptness. Retain sartorial virtue.

And do not, under any circumstances, wear slippers you’ve cut from a sheet of velco-enhanced felt.

Please.

We’re used to seeing this sort of thing on runways, but when it goes retail, we feel compelled to sound the alarm bells before some fashion-forward lady friend of ours makes an impulse buy and finds herself looking at the world through her own personal beaded curtain.

In all sincerity: If you wear this, you will trip and hurt yourself.

And possibly jingle when you walk.

All luxury eventually curdles into self-parody, as Karl Lagerfeld can attest. And when it does, it’s never pretty.

But by the time you’re putting a bowtie and leopard print shorts on a dog, the game is pretty much over. What happened, Cavalli?

Then again, when you start being name-checked in rap songs, turning to canine fashion may be the only sensible move left.

We like to think we’re fighting back the ridiculous here at Kempt, but occasionally we see something that tests our faith in the underlying sanity of the fashion industry.

They just never learn, do they?

For the record, we have a lot of respect for Yohji Yamamoto, and we don’t want him to stop indulging himself.

But when you’re dressing grown men like 60-year-old female librarians, it may be time to reassess your principles.

The worst part is, we can imagine exactly how this happened. The shirt got looser and looser, and longer and longer, and more and more tartan. We’re betting Yohji didn’t know he’d made a shawl until it was all too late.

As for the skirt…your guess is as good as ours.

We see a lot of bikes on our daily RSS trawl, and as strange as they get, they all get at least one thing right: function comes first. It’s not a car, and it’s not a tie. Let’s not overthink it.

For instance, by covering it with fake fur.

When used right, repurposed fabrics can give familiar items a new twist, make a clever comment on material sourcing, or just give great cloth a second chance. But you always have to consider where it’s been…

For instance, we’d think twice before wearing nylon that was once part of an inflatable sex toy. There just isn’t enough bleach in the world.

We tend to gloss over it, but the traditional dark glass wine bottle is a pretty stunning design object. It’s sleek, geometric, and classy without being ostentatious. In other words, it’s perfect just the way it is.

But you can’t please everyone, so Christian Audigier has taken it upon himself to make French wine “cool again.” Apparently by covering it with day-glo panthers.

Audigier’s trying to draw in the whisky-and-beer crowd, but as usual he’s missing the point. Wine isn’t whisky and covering it with tattoos isn’t going to change that. All it does is ride roughshod over the centuries of French style, and show off his own very short memory.

And produce some extremely ugly beverages in the process.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this man is an asshole.

Our old friend Jared Paul Stern just filed this dispatch from the world of unimaginable wealth. He’s tasked with the world’s richest asshole, and we have to hand it to him: he made a pretty good choice. Introducing Mr. Marcus von Anhalt…

We detail the crimes of Mr. von Anhalt»

Vanityfair.com just executed what might be the best foreign policy/fashion bifecta ever to grace the slideshow form. The subject is Muammar Quaddafi, and his various bizzaro style choices—ranging from absurdly rococo kufis to HIStory-era MJ uniforms. Never has a world leader looked so much like a homeless person and remained in power.

The piece might seem a bit breezy considering how repressive Qaddafi’s been for the past 40 years, but we bet there are dozens of Libyan newspapermen who would kill to be able to write this piece. He’s deserved a good deflating for decades now, and it would appear that Graydon Carter has given it to him.

We don’t want to spoil it for you, so we’ll just single out this picture as worth a look. It’s actually one of his more understated outfits, but it might be enough to qualify him for a new kind of watch list…

Generally, we’re fans of function. Pockets, for instance, and tough fabrics that can handle wear and weather. But that doesn’t mean we want we want our suspenders to do anything other than suspend.

And, in general, we’d prefer it if you left our collar stays alone.

Enter Exuvius, a company offering laser-cut collar stays that double as a bottle opener, two types of screwdriver, and a thread-cutter. Leaving aside the question of how that Phillips-head looks in a collar, how exactly is a gentleman supposed to get it out of his collar without looking, well, less than gentlemanly? We’re all in favor of paying a little more attention to collar support, but going the Swiss Army route won’t do anyone any favors.

And last time we checked, Macgyver was more of a work shirt man.