Fugly Marmalade, yet also, Well Played, Patti Labelle

My first thought when I saw this dress on Patti Labelle was, "Well, I suppose it was only a matter of time before Laura Ashley started hitting the bong."

Seriously, if there were a Broomcorn Farms Harvest Pageant Barbie, she would be wearing something like this for the talent portion. And Patti wants you to DRINK IT IN, GOOD PEOPLE, like it's the bourbon you keep in your hip flask (or in the fully stocked wet bar she's got stowed away somewhere in the neighborhood of her pelvis). I'm sitting here begging her to pick a silhouette and go with it -- cocktail-length frippery or sleekly silhouetted evening wear, but not its mutant bastard child-- and Patti's out there all, "TA-DA! That's RIGHT! I'll be here all week, folks! Tip my publicist."

But then I learned that she actually DID have a magic trick up her sleeve -- or skirt, as it were.

I am almost speechless. Was that thing DETACHABLE? Because that is so insane that it becomes brilliant. I mean... did Patti Labelle just pull something that even Joan Collins has never done? Did she just make Barbie turn green with envy? Did she just morph from being a kooky lady dressed in somebody's bedroom wallpaper to the AWESOMEST trickster in all of creation? And did she just go from being fugged straight to the Well Played category without passing go, collecting $200, or having to risk landing on Boardwalk when it has three hotels on it?

I think she did. I might need oxygen. Thank God I wasn't there when she ripped it off -- because, in my mind, she absolutely grabbed it and tore it off in front of everyone, then twirled it over her head and threw it onto the head of the hottest photographer in the press pit -- or else I might have passed out, oversaturated with camp and glee and campy glee. Look at her -- she's all, "Yeah, that's right, honey, we're not in Kansas any more. We are in LEG CITY and you've got a lot of sightseeing to do." The open-air double-decker bus leaves in five minutes.