Multi-hyphenate Julia Fox and celebrity stylist Law Roach host OMG Fashun, E!’s new design competition series where every fashion rule is meant to be broken. Fox leans more toward performance artist than real person in her role as host and fashion muse and the show follows suit – it’s weird on purpose, bucking all conventions, and the end result is a frenetic fashion fever dream.
OMG FASHUN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Host Julia Fox taps a talon-like fingernail on a microphone and announces, “Attention, Disruptors!” – because that’s what the contestants on this show are called, they’re not designers or artists, they are iconoclastic, right-brained disruptors – and Fox then explains the rules of the game.
The Gist: And just what are the rules of this particular fashion-forward game? In every episode of OMG Fashun, Fox – a fashion rule-breaker and cultural iconoclast for the 21st century of ever there was one – gives three innovative designers two fashion challenges based around using unorthodox materials or methods. Fox, along with stylist Law Roach and a guest judge, determine a winner whose looks will then be modeled by Fox and they’ll take home $10,000.
In the premiere, my Traitors queen Phaedra Parks joins Fox and Roach for a challenge Fox describes as turning “basic into batshit”: after providing the three designers with a mock turtleneck, their challenge is to transform the top into whatever they want as long as they don’t use a needle and thread. What’s interesting is that for this challenge we don’t ever see the designer’s process, all the handiwork is done off-camera and their designs walk down a runway in Fox’s “brownstone.” Fox selects a winner, and then immediately sends the designers off for one more design challenge. In a workroom, they receive a box filled with, in this case, natural materials which include mushrooms, insects, bones, hair, and, oh yes, blood, which the designers then have to turn into something for Julia to wear to a pagan midsummer party.
Though we watch a couple minutes of actual design and construction, it’s constantly interrupted by Fox throwing in new twists to the challenge. Soon, the looks walk the runways, and the judges gawk and ooh and ahh, or in some cases, turn up their noses. Phaedra holds a brick of money up to her ear like a phone to depict what the winner will receive, Julia throws a half-eaten apple to the side to explain that’s what the runner-up will win. And then, with no real deliberation, Fox announces a winner. And then the show’s over, there’s no more to it.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? If you took the talent and skill of fashion designers on Project Runway, and combined it with Chopped, where chefs create something (hopefully) great out of clashing ingredients, you get the creative chaos of OMG Fashun.
Our Take: “So grotesque,” one contestant, Sho, says during the design challenge as he tries to incorporate bugs and blood into a piece of apparel for Julia Fox. There may be no better way to describe the show’s vibe. The show embraces oddity in every form, and it’s definitely giving us something we’ve never seen before, a blend of camp and performance art by way of Michaels Craft Stores.
OMG Fashun moves quickly, and the show is less a platform for the designers than it is for Fox’s schtick, which is, thankfully, self-aware and silly rather than self-serious. It’s a vibe that owes something to Drag Race, and you can’t help but wonder if maybe that show’s hour-long format featuring a cavalcade of contestants appearing all season long could have served this show a little better, too, so it wouldn’t feel so fleeting and rapid-fire. Instead, the show feels like a glorified web series; it’s so short, and it cribs so much from internet culture that it feels like it belongs there.
Sex and Skin: Unfortunately for us, much of the show’s silly, dirty innuendo is bleeped out, though it’s easy enough to piece together the jokes. And since the fashions are all meant to be weird and risqué, there’s plenty of skin on display.
Parting Shot: Julia walks in, nay, performs in the winning ensemble; she doesn’t just don the outfit that the winning designer has made for the runway, she stars in a little vignette, as if she got lost in the woods on the way to her midsummer festival, night fell, and she ethereally, gracefully, tried to find her way home.
Performance Worth Watching: This is Fox’s show, but I think Law Roach gets some of the best one-liners.
Memorable Dialogue: Not quite dialogue, but in the show’s opening credits, the phrase “Go viral or get canceled!” flashes on the screen. This is a combination of words I basically hate, but this show is embracing the social media-ness of life and despite my own misgivings, it pretty well encapsulates the world we live in and the world these designers and Fox herself all thrive in.
Our Call: STREAM IT but not because you love fashion or competition shows, simply because it works best as a half-hour comedy: funny, full of characters, and a very easy way to wind down after A DAY.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
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