*DISCLAIMER: I am nowhere near as sartorially savvy as, say, Fashion Sensei, The Sartorialist, or Geometric Sleep. However, when it comes to the new boutique line Rendez-Vous by Paul & Joe Sister being peddled by notorious fe-mullet mecca Urban Outfitters, well, I just can’t keep my opinions to myself.

Behold! The power of good photography. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be momentarily enchanted by this twee little windowsill-tableau, “Look! A Nico-esque model! Whitewashed apartment! Cute polka dot top! A Well-stocked bookshelf! Oooh, I wanna see more!” However, the colorful vintage ikat rug is swiftly pulled from beneath your feet once you click “view collection“…… (after the jump!) That cute, totally wearable polka dot top? Nowhere to be found in this colection. This is a classic bait-and-switch. For a guy, it’s like bringing home a beautiful woman only to find some unexpected, you know, equipment down there. But, for clothes-loving women, it’s just cruel to draw us in with a pretty picture and a cutesy French name and then give us tired, overdone silhouettes and stylings that would make more sense slupmed over on a plastic lawn chair in front of a mobile home rather than strutting down Houston. You’ll see what I mean:

Um, wait.. Didn’t we just do this? Didn’t we just do the black-and-white-bib-top-with-princessy-sleeves-and-jaunty-pleated-shorts thing like, a year ago with Erin Fetherston? At Target? For, like, $30? This shit is priced at $128. Can you believe that shit? This four-seasons-ago look is going for marked-down Betsy Johnson dress prices. Paul & Joe Sister, I’d laugh in your face if it wasn’t so sad.

Meh. This looks like everything UO has stocked from Kimchi & Blue for the last 3 years or so. On the whole, not a terrible dress. If you’re a size 4 or below. And have no hips. See, this whole slim-cut-dress-topped-with-wide-ruffles thing really only works on the waify. If you have any kind of frame at all, you’ll either look like a corn-fed Icelandic farmer’s daughter off to draw the milk for the next batch of Skeer, or like some kind of cross-dressing linebacker. But, I suspect that if a linebacker were to cross-dress, he’d chose something with a little more Liza than a dowdy cotton/lurex house dress. $228 can buy a whole lot of sequins, Urlacher , you remember that.

As if this dress looking like a glorified apron (at $228) wasn’t enough to turn you away, I’ve got a visual for you: In the 80s, trailor-dwelling, summertoothed waitresses at all-you-can-eat seafood buffets in Louisiana used to wear this dress as a uniform. The look was topped off with frosty blue eyeshadow, denim-colored mascara, fluffy perms, and plastic earrings shaped like fruit. If you can’t imagine that, just picture Juliette Lewis in just about every movie she was ever in in the 90s.

This dress looks like that green and white striped number that Jeffrey Sebelia did for his big Project Runway-winning runway show. You know the dress I’m thinking of- it was the only wearable thing in that collection. And yeah, this is a cute dress, but the fact that I can so easily compare it to something that’s come before (way, way, waaaay before) just speaks to the overall staleness of this whole line.

Now here’s where it starts getting ridiculous. This is NOT a dress. It’s called even a “swing top”, so why is it styled like it’s a dress? What the fuck? Didn’t we exhaust this issue in 2007 with Britney? Didn’t we establish though a lot of hard work and speaking calmly and slowly while avoiding the use of big words that hip-grazing-in-length tops are not to be worn as dresses? Not that this is really even a top to begin with anyway. This looks like underwear. If you dig this look, please do me a favor and save your $132. What you need to do is go to the lingere section at any thrift store in America. You can get this exact top (hopefully not covered in troubling mystery stains) for about $1. You’re welcome?

Aw, HELL naw! What the fuck is this shit? This dress, if we can call it that (because frankly it looks more like a tea cozy from the Weasly residence than a dress), is straight-up truck stop hookin’. How else can you explain the styling? Like anyone, anywhere is going to do their grocery shopping in a transparent knit dress with all-black lingere underneath. I mean, outside of Jacksonville, Florida, that is. For real, the fuggitude of this look nearly defies explanation. It’s equal parts Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (the underage hooker factor), Alley Sheedy in Short Circuit (the frumpy, fussy factor), and Juliette Lewis (again!) in Kalifornia -or Strange Days, or, you know, any movie she was in in the 90s. If anyone pays $148 to look this trashy and tasteless, I will personally drive over to their house and beat them senseless with life-sized cutouts of Clinton and Stacy. But right now, I think I need to lie down….