Dancing with the Stars – Who Wore it Better??
Look, Courtney and I DID find something to snark on. 🙂 Not really, we just decided that it was time to put some of the wardrobe recyclers (or victims thereof) head to head to see if it’s always such a good idea. The answer is….no, not always. 🙂 On with the show…
Battle of the black & white paso dress: Chelsie’s pro paso with Derek this season vs. Cheryl’s paso with Gilles in season 8
Courtney: Hands down, Chelsie rocked this one better. She was working the skirt with every move, and I think the cut-out back really showed off her arm lines. As for Cheryl – I thought it looked too bulky on her frame and she didn’t really utilize the skirt like Chelsie did…almost seems like she was weighed down by it.
Heidi: Yeah, I don’t know why it didn’t work on Cheryl. Maybe it was the hair pulled up that put too much weight on the dress. She has a great body, it just didn’t work. Isn’t that the dance where Gilles went shirtless? That could be it too – too much contrast between the two of them.
Courtney: Yep, Gilles was indeed shirtless. With the high-waisted black dance pants and some sort of necklace. Mmmmm!
Heidi: Hold up a sec!! Seeing the pictures side by side – Chelsie had the whole front of the skirt cut out!! That removed a ton of bulk and allowed her to work the skirt better. Cheryl would have benefitted tremendously from that same cut out.
The winner: Chelsie, for workin’ that skirt for all it’s worth!
Battle of the white 2-piece Latin dress: Nicole’s pre-season photo shoot vs. Natalie’s bolero with Alec in season 9
Courtney: I’m gonna go with Nicole on this one, for the simple fact that Natalie was just so meek sometimes that a lot of her costumes seemed to overwhelm her. I think it suits Nicole’s sexy, confident attitude. Both have great bodies, but Nicole’s got the vibe to go with it – along with some killer curves to fill it out a bit better than Natalie, who had more of an athletic build.
Heidi: Yeah, I’m with ya. You have to have serious attitude and confidence to pull that look off and Natalie seemed a bit afraid of it. Plus, she had all the Rumba crap attached to it that got lost when Nicole wore it – lots less material on Nicole, if you look at them side by side.
The winner: Nicole, for the ‘tude, confidence, and dangerous curves!
Battle of the black, edgy, fringy 2-piece dress: Anna’s pre-season photo shoot w/Evan (as well as the week 2 pro dance) vs. Joanna’s jive with Derek in season 9
Heidi: Joanna had a combination of attitude, bad ass hair, and Derek as a partner, that made her pull off that outfit better. Even the picture of Derek and Joanna shows why I think she pulls it off better.
Courtney: I think Joanna was slightly more believable in this one – the hair & attitude really pulled the whole outfit together. It also seems a little bit loose on Anna – another small frame kinda overshadowed by the costume. And I just don’t see her as a rock chick.
The winner: Joanna, for her rocker attitude that matched that of her partner
Battle of the black & silver fringed Latin dress: Pam’s pre-season photo shoot with Damian vs. Cheryl’s pro dance in week 2 vs. Mya’s jive with Dmitry in season 9
Heidi: I thought Cheryl rocked this dress, but it was more the dance than the dress itself. She killed in that dance. I’m going with her and I confess it’s because she was the standout female in that dance – the still photo doesn’t do it justice.
Courtney: I say Mya, but just by a hair over Pam. I think Cheryl has to be really careful with very heavy trimmings on dresses – like the ruffles on the paso dress, I think this made her look heavier than she really is. The dress suits Pam’s smoldering attitude perfectly, but it doesn’t quite look as impressive sitting still on her as it does moving with Mya as she’s flicking and jumping in the jive – look at how it stands out. Plus it seemed to fit the flapper theme of their jive well.
The winner: For dancing, Cheryl. The actual dress? Mya by a hair.
Battle of the silver-fringed Latin dress: Shannon’s pre-season photo shoot with Mark vs. Edyta’s pro dance in week 2 vs. Kym’s cha-cha with Donny in season 9
Courtney: I feel bad for anyone who has had to wear the same costume as Edyta – with a body like hers, not many women stand a chance. She looks fantastic in this one, especially with those black boots she was rockin’. Shannon seems a little overwhelmed by it, and I don’t think it’s the best color on Kym – seems to wash her out a bit.
Heidi: Do you even need to ask? Edyta, of course.
The winner: Edyta, by a killer body
Battle of the white & flesh-toned Latin dress: Kate’s pre-season photo shoot with Tony vs. Joanna’s rumba with Derek in season 9
Heidi: Well, Joanna clearly has a better body, but I didn’t like this dress on her. Actually – it wasn’t the dress. You can’t underestimate how much how you wear your hair will impact the overall effect. If Joanna had had softer, romantic hair for this dress, she would win it. Hair is important!
Courtney: As much as it may pain me…I’m actually gonna go with Kate on this one. I always thought it looked way too conservative and matronly on Joanna – both qualities which make the dress more appropriate for Kate. In any other (skimpier) dress, Joanna would have had it for sure – I still wonder why, of all weeks, they chose rumba week to cover her up…and give her such old-fashioned hair. Crazy wardrobe & hair people!
Heidi: You know, the pros are generally in charge of the costuming, but when they recycle so blatantly, I wonder how much input they actually have? Derek usually does so well…then again, I wondered what the hell they were doing to Joanna hair and makeup-wise much of the season. She had some BAD makeup. Wonder if it was Joanna messing about.
The winner: Kate. By a (head full of) hair. 🙂
Battle of the denim & fringe 2-piece cowboy outfit: Edyta’s pro dance to Reba in week 3 vs. Chelsie’s country two-step with Louie in season 9
Courtney: This has got to be the most adorable outfit I have seen all season – it’s cute while at the same time being sexy, and the fringe moves so well in two-step spins. While I think they both look fantastic in it, I think it’s a little better suited to Chelsie…she seems like a country girl. I just have a hard time imagining a Polish bombshell with an accent as heavy as a fried pierogi as a cowgirl!
Heidi: Well, I think Chelsie pulls off “cowgirl” better than Edyta by a mile. Edyta is too sultry for the cowgirl thing, whereas it fits Chelsie to a T. But damn, look at Edyta’s body! And you see the reason why Edyta is not a cowgirl – she took at least 4 inches off an already short skirt. On the top AND the bottom. 🙂
The winner: Chelsie, for being our favorite l’il cow-girl next door
Wow…seeing them side by side really does make a HUGE difference. I hadn’t noticed that they had removed a lot of the ruffles from the paso dress after Cheryl wore it, and that they had shortened Chelsie’s fringe cowgirl skirt by SEVERAL inches for Edyta, hehe 😉 Oh and that they had removed several of the drapes from Natalie’s costume in order to Nicole to wear it for her photo shoot. Now I can understand doing some minor “tweaking” to suit the needs of the photo shoot/dance, but I’m wondering if the costume folks think it’s enough for us, the novice viewers with the untrained eyes and bad memories, to forget that the dress had already been worn once, lol. Like one of the seamstresses said, “Crap, we don’t have enough time to make a new dress from scratch for the pro dance – here, just pull this cowgirl one out of storage, raise the hem by about 4”, and no one will know the difference! It’s GENIUS!’ Granted, maybe they don’t really give two hoots if they ditto a costume (the average Latin costume costs between $2-4K to make – and times are tough), but I’m wondering if some of these tweaks were done more to make the dress seem less recognizable (such as with Nicole’s dress – I think it would have looked just as good with the drapes), rather than for any functional reason (opening up the front of the paso dress so it didn’t look so heavy).
Also noticing a theme in the outfits that have been dittoed – with the exception of Chelsie’s cowgirl outfit, all of the dresses are neutral shades – black, white, grey, flesh. It makes sense; a really bright, unique-colored dress would be more likely to be recognized the second go-round.
Wow… Ok, honestly I don’t really pay attention to the costumes as much as I do the music… so kudos!
This was an interesting read… and makes me wonder how many other costumes has been recycled. Wow… I’m just… wow.
Marianya – You’d be surprised – a LOT of costumes have gotten reused! Once I started actively looking for dittoes, I found quite a few…I have enough pix saved on my computer for 2-3 more posts like this, should this one prove popular. 🙂 The one thing I have to commend the costume folks on is that they don’t seem to repeat costumes for regular week-to-week dances – if it’s already been worn by a pro or a celeb for one of their weekly dances, they don’t reuse it for another pro or celeb in another weekly dance. They really only seem to ditto for the pro dances and the pre-season photo shoots.
Another interesting thing I found in my quest is that a lot of these dittoed costumes are actually onsale to the public at the Randall website. Many of the ones shown here (including Cheryl/Chelsie’s paso dress & Mya’s jive dress) are still available for purchase…so I’m thinking the folks at Randall are like “Well, this one hasn’t sold yet – let’s reuse it for a pro dance in the meantime, and maybe that will generate some interest!” Smart idea, really – they need to recoup some of the exorbitant cost of making these dresses. A gal from my studio actually bought Julianne’s dress from the Design-a-Dance in season 7 (the piano one) – when it arrived, you could actually see faint stains from Julianne’s spray tan on the lining. Must be nice to have a few extra grand laying around to throw down on a previously-worn dress! So yah, if anyone is absolutely in LOVE with the paso dress – it can be yours for the low price of $3100! 😉
i’m pretty sure that the costume that Derek had in his paso with Chelsie was from MArk’s second paso with Shawn, like they did with Cheryl’s dress, they took some parts of the costume.
Wow!! This post was awesome! Quite possibly my favorite post of all time on Pure DWTS. I’m nominating it for the Pure DWTS emmy for best post.
Interestingly, I agree with pretty much all of the analysis too. Except for the “Battle of the black & silver fringed Latin dress” I thought all 3 of them looked horrible in it. Just get rid of the dress already.
*blushing* Why thank you John 🙂 Heidi and I appreciate the kudos! We actually plan on doing sequels to this post – as I mentioned above, I have found FAR more dittoes than the 7 shown here. We’re hoping to get some good feedback and generate some good discussion!
And while I don’t necessarily hate the silver & black fringed dress, it’s definitely not my fave, either. It’s a little generic – that particular silhouette with the fringe is a pretty basic staple in ladies’ Latin costuming, and seems like a bit of a cop-out compared to some of the other, more intricate costumes we’ve seen the ladies wear on the show. It was made for Mya’s flapper-themed jive, so I guess it worked decently well for that; I’m not sure if Pam, Damian, or some wardrobe assistant picked it for her photo shoot, but it didn’t look nearly as impressive under the studio lights as it did out on the floor; and I’m thinking it was the best they could find for Cheryl in order to fit in with the black & silver color scheme of the week 2 pro dance this season. Definitely seems like a bit of a cop-out dress on the part of wardrobe…I think I might have liked it better in a brighter color.
Yep. I’m not sure anyone really saw Cheryl’s outfit with Edyta on the floor in hers.
I think part of the reason that we see a lot of the costumes repeated during pro dances, is because they really don’t have a lot of time to put them together. I THINK I’ve heard that sometimes it’s a matter of days. And, we know how hard the costuming department works to put the costumes together each week, saving them some time and effort by reusing what they can does make sense.
In season 8, Julianne wore the exact same dress for her pro dance with Tony for Rascal Flatts, as she did during her week 1 waltz.
I can remember other costume repeats, and it’s funny to be sitting and watching, and then be able to have a discussion about where we’ve seen that costume before.
Let’s see…. Julianne’s season 7 army-ish Paso dress and I THINK Kym’s dominatrix paso dress were used by non-show pros for a pro dance, but I don’t remember the season…. Karina’s worn a couple of Julianne’s costumes for some pro dances. And I’ve seen all 3 of those black with polka dots dresses in a bunch of pro dances…
I’d love to see MORE, MORE! of the repeat costume posts!
Heh heh ita with all of these. 😉 But one I think you guys forgot was Shawn’s Cha Cha dress, which was also Anna D.’s during the women’s (not that great) opening number in S9. Shawn wore it better…hands down.
there is alot of costume that were used again
Shawn’s samba dress was used by Natalie in her promo picture, Shawn’s mambo dress was used by Anna T in a samba group dance in season 9 and for Ashely in this picture with Cheryl and Edyta
Rest assured, we know there are many, many more dittos than this – which we will address in subsequent posts 🙂 But feel free to list any you’d definitely like to see, and we’ll try to make it happen!
dont forget about shawn johnson and anna demidova in the black and gold dress!
shawn:
http://ontheredcarpet.typepad.com/.a/6a010536c12963970b011570988d2e970b-800wi
anna:
?? i cant find a link but she wore the same dress somewhere…
does anyone else know what im talking about?
sorry, just realized that hotaru pointed out the same thing
i found the picture of Anna D. with Shawn’s dress
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/91031347/Disney-ABC-Television-Group
in the same dance Kym had Melissa R. cha cha dress
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/91031345/Disney-ABC-Television-Group
Here’s DanceSport competitor Devorah Kastner (partnered by Radomir Pashev in Professional American Smooth) at the Galaxy Dance Festival wearing the Cheryl/Chelsie paso doble dress. She added a sequin belt!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkkGPEDd_c
If you watch the whole video, take a minute to appreciate Youriy Pavlov (124) and Anna Shahbazyan in the white.
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I have looked through all editions of your who wore it better, and I have to say I never really noticed so many of the costumes being reused. Of course there were the few stand outs such as the fluffy bottomed yellow and red ones, but usually I’m too focused on the dancing to be honest to really remember old costumes, so thank you for posting this! It was great fun to look at! But, I have to say that I disagreed with almost every one of your decisions. It may have been because I didn’t judge them on the way the dancer looks in the photo, but rather how the dress actually compliments them. Just a thought for the future…