I know, I know, it’s totally obsessive, but I cannot stop. The other day the kids and I were watching a new episode of Hi-5 and the outfits on all three girls were just too hideous to not share with the world. Photos and my scathing comments after the jump.
The really scary thing is that I am now seeing these fashion crimes showing up in the windows of so-called trendy, “teen” stores at the local mall. The rolled up, tight-tight jeans under skirts. The fat, shiny belts. The neck scarves. The really bad, shiny shrugs. Not to mention all the other horrifying stuff from the 80s I’ve seen around lately, including jelly bracelets, lace tops/skirts, and hair ribbons a la Madonna circa 1983. It’s scary out there.
Again, my apologies for the crap quality here, I snapped these with my pocket digital camera from the TV.
Here’s Jen in a lovely turquoise bodysuit and matching neck scarf, paired with a blue tank top and big silver belt. And because it matches…not at all…a really shiny red miniskirt that says, “Blowjobs $5 extra.”
And now here’s Karla from the same episode in white pants with no shoes and hot pink tank top…and if only they had stopped there. Instead they had to add the ubiquitous shiny belt and heaven-only-knows dress/top/muumuu thing over all.
And last but not least, here’s Kimmee, who the costume designer must really, really hate. She’s sporting the ever-popular tight, rolled-up jeans under a skirt with fat belt; shiny pink ballet slippers; and two tank tops with a shiny purple shrug overtop, because why stop at two layers when you can have three that don’t match at all?
Just in case you didn’t catch it in the last picture, here’s a closeup of Kimmee’s head, so you can see that her “hairstyle” involves gluing an entire game of pick-up-sticks to her head.
Those of you with teenaged daughters would be well advised to start approaching all corners with a mirror, so as to avoid looking directly at anything that might remotely resemble the poor, poor women of Hi-5.
TurtleHead 
I really don’t understand this. Is the costume designer trying to make them look like clowns? Clearly the goal isn’t to make the cast look good/stylish, so what is the goal? If it’s not to be funny, is it to catch the audience’s attention? Makes me think of the Woozit, not visually appealing but perhaps mentally stimulating?
I really don’t know. I’m very sorry for your loss.
Dear Lord, don’t you know that replying to my Hi-5 posts only encourages me to talk more about it??? 🙂
I think the problem stems from the first season. The girls then wore outfits that received a lot of compliments. They were brightly coloured, which is great for a kids’ show, but well-matched — maybe yellow pants with a pink-and-wine coloured top, or blue jeans with a pink and blue top. They’d use just one piece with a print or pattern on it, and then take colours from that piece and use solids for the other parts of the costume, for a unified look. They also did a lot of tank-top layering which was pretty fashion-forward at the time (about three or four years ago).
I think this season they must have gotten a new designer who just thought that More Is Better (must be an American!). You liked bright colours? Let’s do More…shiny and bright as possible! You liked patterns? Let’s do More…three or four patterned pieces working “together!” You liked layering? Let’s do More…skirts over pants and belts over that, tank tops under tank tops under flowing tops or shrugs!
I think the new guy, in addition to taking the original concepts to extremes, also wanted to find a new fashion-forward thing like the tank-top layering that could be considered cool, but he didn’t know what was really coming up the pipe, so he threw in everything he could think of that might someday actually make a trend. Gack.
Gack indeed. Maybe the Hi-5 costume designer is the same dresser for the host of So You Think You Can Dance. That woman wears the worst outfits.