It's true that far-out fashion can seem ugly at first, says Doonan (though, as the author of "Wacky Chicks: Life Lessons From Fearlessly Inappropriate and Fabulously Eccentric Women," he appreciates it). And though I shudder to think what the Fug Girls would make of New York party fixture Sylvia Miles, they do claim to be geography-blind bashers.

"People come to L.A. and figure it's a perfect winter climate for miniskirts and Ugg boots; hence, fugly trends are born," offers Cocks. "But every city has its curiosities and its massive mistakes. If I lived in a so-called fashion capital, like New York, I still wouldn't appreciate Chloë Sevigny's wardrobe as art."

Of course, the Fug Girls aren't alone in judging the far-out as far off; magazines like Us Weekly and Star have created a whole cottage industry around rating celebrity fug, both in candid "just taking out the trash in my velour sweat suit/hot pants" paparazzi shots, and sanctioned publicity photos, which suffer commentary from a panel of people who are probably sitting at home in their underwear.

Why is it so interesting -- and off-putting -- to see stars have a stylistic lapse?

"A fugly man that you see walking down the street might only offend people here and there -- he might only offend me once in my life," Srinivasan says. "But celebrities are everywhere; they could do it so much more often. For example: Carrot Top."

"I think celebrities are worse because they have a responsibility to be appealing," she adds.

Morgan thinks the lifestyles of the rich and famous should be a sort of fug repellent.

"If you have everything these people have you should be able to go out of your house without looking like a lunatic," she says. "Either they don't care, or they kind of have no clue."

But true cluelessness should draw mercy, not ire; carelessness, on the other hand, telegraphs a kind of hateful arrogance, a suggestion that the offender is beyond reproach, sartorial or otherwise. ("Vanity is the quicksand of reason," said George Sand.)

"I think celebrities are so comfortable looking good that they don't realize that they can look bad," concludes Federman, the advertising exec.

There is a certain schadenfreude in seeing Jennifer Garner look like a linebacker in a full-size doily.

Judy McGuire, a dating columnist for the New York Press and the Seattle Weekly, has a so-bad-it's-good stance on celebrity fug-pas: "I love looking at celebrity fugliness because, sure, that person may be hotter, richer, skinnier and more famous than I'll ever be, but at least I'll never be caught dead in shearling hot pants," she wrote in an e-mail.

Besides, isn't presenting stars in all their fuglory a sort of backhanded compliment, an elevation of the very behavior that it denigrates? After all, fuggery apparently sells magazines -- "The Olsens' Worst Outfits!" frothed a recent cover of Us Weekly (subtitle: "Billionaire$ or Bum$?") -- and listing the fugliest of their time has kept the otherwise-unoccupied Mr. Blackwell around for 45 years.

"It's never the swans that get copied," Doonan asserts. "It's the fugly girls." (Mary-Kate, style icon?)

"'Fugly' is like an infantile version of the French 'jolie laide,'" he adds (the phrase literally translates to "pretty ugly"). "It's a mistake to use it in a derogative way. Good taste and bad taste are irrelevant when it comes to confronting fugly. It's not a pejorative, it's a fact."

For all her fug-bashing, Morgan admits to some ambivalence about seeing her favorite subjects, like Sevigny, clean up well. "When she shows up looking great, I feel like, 'Oh, she looks great, and I'm really happy for her,'" she says. "But then I'm kind of disappointed that she's not wearing a crazy outfit."

"There's something very right about a person who embraces their fugliness," agrees McGuire. "Where's the fun in being ordinary?"

Even harsh judges like Srinivasan aren't immune to fug love. "Just because you deem someone fugly, doesn't mean you can't celebrate something about them," she says.

As long as they're not wearing Uggs.

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