Vote Now
Houston's own Project Runway in reverse: Help us pick a really good pair of badpants
I need a pair of bad pants really bad.
To promote the 13th Annual Bad Pants Open Golf Tournament Oct. 13 at the Clubs of Kingwood, organizers plan a kick-off fashion show next month featuring Houston news anchors, magazine editors and radio personalities who model really outrageous pants. It's a great idea for a good cause: All proceeds go to Texas Children's Hospital Newborn Center.
I have no doubt I can "out-bad" Tom Koch and Rachel McNeill. The only problem is I don't have anything really outrageous in my closet, and I'm really competitive. I want to win, even if it means looking my worst.
So I enlisted students in Silvio Ortega's menswear class at Houston Community College's fashion design program to help. They are a really creative bunch, so I knew they would come up with some brilliantly bad ideas with flair.
They submitted sketches for a pair of outrageous pants and with the help of Kay King, who chairs the HCC fashion and interior design programs, I whittled the sketches down to four finalists.
Now I need your help.
Think of this as a mini-version of Project Runway and you're Michael Kors or Nina Garcia.
The four sketches are shown here and on the CultureMap home page. Vote for the one you think is really bad — in the best way.
While creating their designs for bad pants, the students each incorporated some fashionable elements:
A) In a nod to golf attire of a long-ago era, Jose Alfredo Saucedo created a pair of knickers out of a fabric printed with eyeglasses and dotted with plastic sunglasses.
B) Will Baldwin devised a pair of drop crotch pants made of a preppie pastel fabric dotted with a golf crest logo and pink pom pons.
C) Francisco J. Castillo came up with a pair of bell bottom pants made of five different patterned fabrics, including a monkey pattern.
D) Joshua Wallwork created a pair of fitted pants made of two monkey-patterned fabrics. One leg is red; the other black.
The winner by popular vote of CultureMap readers will create a pair of pants from his design for me to wear at the fashion show.
And who knows? We might launch the winner on a fantastic fashion career.
Move over, Tom Ford.