Dress Code: The Good, Bad and Ugly

Welcome to Seattlest’s newest weekly column, where we celebrate, critique, commend and (in a loving, gentle way) condemn fashion trends, shows, designers, boutiques, events and everything in between. From the couturiers and costumers to the retail clothiers and quirky DIY crafters, fashion--good and bad--is everywhere. The Dress Code is where we wear our hearts on our sleeves and write about it all.

This week we visited the weird world of wigs, pantyhose and pageants...

The good: Pseudo, campy neighborhood pageants, featuring freaky, fun and absurdly creative “talents” and funky, over-the-top fashions that poke fun at real pageants. The 5th annual Belltown Pageant will showcase Belltown’s favorite industry people and local celebrities in a gloriously cheesy competition for the title of "Mr. Belltown" and "Belltown Betty". The contest will be threefold, with the “Thursday Night on the Prowl” portion where contestants will model their personal street style, “The Talented Mr.Belltown/Betty” talent shit-show (no, seriously, keep reading), and finally, the “Interrogation at Happy Hour” interview segment.

The Belltown Pageant, like most brilliant concepts, was born out of a drunken conversation between the previous Jewelbox Theater booking agent and the beloved Babe of Belltown, who has continued to produce the show, as well as the 1970’s styled Match Game show for the past five years. This pageant is something like being in the “Employees Only” tent after the circus closes and all the carnies, contortionists and other purveyors of the underworld slam back a few whiskeys and coordinate an impromptu talent show amongst themselves. To give you a highly graphic example, 2006 Belltown Betty champ, Misty Baggins, pregnant at the time, once made a white Russian out of her breast milk onstage and served it to a judge, Brett Paulson, 2009’s Mr. Belltown, reenacted a sex scene he witnessed while bartending at Txori out of hand-sewn, anatomically correct sock-puppets, and contestant Bing Wheeler impersonated the Sham-WOW commercial guy as Gary GloryHole wore an awkward head costume with miniature hands, feet and a drooping scrotum. Why do we love it? The question is rather, is it possible not to?