Friday, March 12, 2010

The homeless can be handsome too...

When Vivienne Westwood unveiled her homeless chic collection (pictured above) in mid January of this year, the internet was rife with Zoolander jokes. After all, the film successfully spoofed the bizarre and tacky concept with the "Derelicte" campaign nearly a decade before she came up with it.

Now, the "homelessness is stylish" thing has reached a new level of absurdity with a homeless Chinese dude who is being written about by The Independent (which called him "starkly handsome"), and The Huffington Post (which calls him "the poster boy for homeless chic style" but admits that he "is reported to seem mentally disturbed"). The internet has dubbed the guy Brother Sharp, and various photos of him have been circulating everywhere from FashionIndie.com to BuzzFeed.com for about a month.

A man who is both attractive and homeless at the same time. Unheard of off the runway until now!

Wait, what?

In yesterday's HKMDB Daily News a piece likened Chinese American musician and first time director Wang Lee-hom to Brother Sharp because of his kooky vagrant chic on set:

Incidentally, Wang is reported to be directing an inspirational youth comedy called Love Notices/Love Announcement, starring himself and Joan Chen, but that's neither here nor there.

A social worker in Ningbo (a port city with a population of over 2,000,000) who's trying to protect Brother Sharp's identity was quoted in one of the articles as saying "Homeless people are vulnerable. It is incorrect to use them for entertainment purposes." You don't say! Meanwhile, someone has created a Facebook page for him. Does it kind of make you want to laugh and barf at the same time? It does me.

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