Sartorially Speaking

People stare and smirk as you pass in your culottes, bat-wing top, and shoulder pads. You wear stirrup pants over your shoes. Your getups are not ghetto fabulous but a modish monstrosity.

On Saturday E! Entertainment television's foremost fashionista, Leon Hall, will be in Miami to counsel the style-challenged. Hall, the man who compared Gwyneth Paltrow's breasts at the Academy Awards to chicken cutlets, will give two women who live at a Salvation Army shelter a new look. While supervising the makeovers, he'll also offer pointers to those of us who think we pull it together but don't. Hoochie mamas and soccer moms take heed. New Times got the lowdown from Hall on style or lack thereof.

New Times: What defines a fashion emergency most?

Leon Hall: Most fashion emergencies occur in most any airport in America. The things that people wear on a plane are appalling. I don't want to see gym shorts and tank tops. Spandex is a privilege, not a right. I'm not saying that people have to dress up and wear hat and gloves on a plane, but people don't even come clean.

Bigger fashion queen: George W. Bush or Hillary Clinton?

Hillary never pulled it together as First Lady. But the minute she ran for office she got a stylist who said, 'Girl, you got some bad legs. You better keep yourself in pants.'

And Bush?

I don't mind the Western drag thing he does. It doesn't bother me.

Does fashion really matter?

Yes, it does. I remember as a kid having something new to wear was just the most wonderful reason to go to school. Now was that a sickness? It's better than doing drugs. It's like that fig leaf. Adam was pleased to have a big fig leaf. It said something about him.

What comes to mind when you think about Miami fashion?

Overkill. Just too much. Let's pull back. The young girls make more mistakes than the men because the heels are too high, the hair too blonde, there's too many streaks, the dress is too bare, they are too tan, there's too much makeup, too much jewelry.

What do we need to know to look better as a people?

We need to know about grooming. Grooming is a big mistake in America. There's nothing masculine about badly cut hair, dirty nails, and non-pedicured feet. Grooming has no gender -- there are no cojonesattached to it whatsoever. When you're young and divine you can make a lot of things fly. But you never can make bad grooming fly.