

The store features reproductions of the sorts of clothing pinup girls might have worn in the 1950s, and this past Saturday they arranged a fashion show to show off their wares. A new store has opened up there called Bettie Page Clothing, named after the iconic 1950s pinup model. This past weekend I went to my third fashion show, also at the Mall of America. “We already miss our film crew!” we said. We ran into one of the contestants on the way out, also in her car. I got confused and voted for the wrong girl, and Coco lost, and we drove home very late at night. And, at the end, Coco dressed in her three new ensembles and walked the catwalk, and I cheered for her, and we cast votes for whoever we thought should win. He wanted us to trash talk the other contestants, but we had barely met them eventually, the producer told us one of the other contestants had started crying from the stress of the event, so we made fun of that.
#Soda pinupgirls how to#
We stopped dead on a broken escalator, feigning uncertainty as to how to get off it and pleading for help, much to annoyance of our producer. We decided we would scream in terror every time Debbie Matenopoulos accosted us, which she pretended not to notice. We were constitutionally incapable of taking the event seriously. I felt like a tornado, and sometimes I would see other contestants, across the MOA from me, with their own film crew swirling around them like a twister. We could go wherever we wanted in the very busy mall, at whatever speed (and the producer encouraged us to run about as though we were in a panic), and the film crew would just clear the way. The wrangler often did this by just shoving people out of the way, so I can see why it might irritate other customers. In fairness, the crew consisted of about a dozen people, including a producer, two camerapeople, a gang of PAs who would press release forms into the hands of anybody who accidentally got in the shot, and a wrangler whose job it was to hold the belt of any cameraman who was walking backwards and keep him from crashing into things. Not only could we not find the three ensembles we wanted at Ragstock, but the other customers seemed annoyed at our film crew. We had originally schemed to just go to Ragstock and buy three ensembles, and then spend the rest of our time sleeping at MinneNapolis, the (sadly now closed) mall store that allowed you to get some shut-eye in one of several theme rooms. It was all supposed to look very impromptu, as though Matenopoulos was just seized with the urge to give us money in the MOA elevator we had, instead, auditioned for the show weeks earlier.

In it, Coco and I were accosted by former host of “The View” Debbie Matenopoulos, who gave us several hundred dollars and sent us off in search of three new outfits for Coco, which she would then have to model at the end of the show. The other time was for a reality show I was in about five years ago with my girlfriend, Coco, called “ Instant Beauty Pageant” and set at the Mall of America. The only thing better than being in the front row for a fashion show is being on the catwalk. The last was at the History Center’s Retrorama, which began with a regular fashion show and ended with fashion anarchy, as the audience themselves took the stage and strutted their stuff. I think I’ve only been to two fashion shows in my life, and I was in both, sort of. According to the book “How to Becomes Famous in Two Weeks or Less” by Melissa De La Cruz and Karen Robinovitz, those front seats are so coveted that if one becomes abandoned, fashion-show attendees will fight for them, presumably in the way survivors of the apocalypse in Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” fight over the last remaining bottles of soda or cans of beans. As I understand it, that’s the true VIP area, reserved for the likes of Garry Shandling, Stephen Dorff, and Sandra Bernhard, if I remember “Zoolander” correctly. But only if I can be seated next to the runway. I don’t often get to fashion shows, although I would like to go more often. Models in clothes from Bettie Page Clothing at the Mall of America.
