Nope, ankle scarves are not the latest thing to come out of Italy or Germany or wherever. I was skeptical when I came across this Country Living article that declared them a "trend," as the image is clearly Photoshopped. So, I started digging. First I went to its source, an Italian website called Lercio. Then I clicked to Lercio's source, a German site called Der Postillon and that's when I knew my suspicions were true. Ankle scarves are fake news parading around on English sites as a real trend.

And that's when I came across this article on Lifehacker. Its author, Nick Douglas, breaks it down for us:

That’s because there is no ankle scarf trend. I’m not saying that there’s really only one person who once wore tiny scarves on their ankles. I’m saying that the photo comes from this joke article on the German satire site Der Postillon.

See, Der Postillon published a joke article that teens in Berlin are wearing scarves around their ankles, to stay warm while wearing fashionably short pants. Then the Italian satire site Lercio syndicated that article. Lercio isn’t pretending to be real any more than Der Postillon is; the front page includes stories about a hermit hiding inside his mailbox, and the pope fighting over parking spots for the Popemobile.

When a blogger for the American site BestProducts.com—not a satire site—picked up the ankle scarf story, she either failed to notice that it was satire, or decided that it would make a better story if she didn’t mention that part.

How low can you go?

NPR is reporting that brides are willing to go really low with the cut of their wedding gowns:

Monte Durham works at an upscale wedding dress store in Atlanta and co-hosts the TLC show Say Yes to the Dress Atlanta. Turn it on, or the original Say Yes to the Dress, set in New York, and you'll plunge into constant drama about plunging matrimonial cleavage.

Illusion fabric does little to assuage concerns on the shows, those of mothers-in law in particular. Brides' penchant for dramatically dipping décolletage is not limited to reality television. Durham sees it among customers at his store, Bridals By Lori.

"Ninety percent of the brides want to try on a revealing gown," he says, adding that customers may not end up buying one. Still, he describes one of the top-selling dresses at Bridals by Lori as "extremely revealing." It should be noted, that this is the kind of store where dresses can cost upwards of $10,000. These dresses are not cheap.

Sociology professor Patricia Arend studies the wedding industry. She believes this trend was influenced by red carpet fashion, which itself, she says, was transformed in the year 2000 by the semi-transparent, super low-cut green Versace gown Jennifer Lopez wore to the Grammy Awards. It exposed much of the singer's chest and midriff.

Brides Everywhere Are Saying Yes To The Low-Cut Dress

image by Ted Van Pelt (which, to be fair, was taken in 2008) Read the rest