Yikes—What Has Happened to Katie's Style?

There may be a method to Katie Holmes' frumptastic style lately

What has happened to Katie Holmes sense of style since she moved to NYC? It's appalling! Please, can you send Posh to rescue her?
—CK

Oh, HELLS to the no! Katie Holmes is slipping? She's taken her eye off the ball gown? Paris is burning! ZOMG!

Let's take a giant step back for a second, kids. Katie may look a little frumptastic, wearing her husband's baggy jeans with '80s-style cuff-rolls in front of dozens of paparazzi. (Yes, really. Her stylist confirmed it and everything.) But fashion experts say there may be a method to Holmes' apparent madness...

In fact, would you believe this may be part of an evil genius master plan to boost sales for Holmes's upcoming fashion line? Here's Corinne Phipps, a wardrobe stylist who also doubles as a marketer. She notes that stars who have fashion lines, or who plan to soon debut such lines, often deliberately dress down in public unless they're wearing one of their own creations.

"The Olsen sisters are a good example of this," Phipps says. "They've done the whole boho-chic thing, but if they're going to wear something, anything, more stylish or cutting-edge, it comes only from their own line.

"It's actually pretty smart branding."

Even top designers are known to do the same thing, Phipps notes.

"If Vera Wang isn't wearing her own stuff, she's dressing down, in all-black, basically," Phipps says.

What does this have to do with Mrs. Cruise?

Holmes and her stylist, Jeanne Yang, have begun a collaboration on their own fashion line. Holmes debuted the first look from the forthcoming Holmes-Yang collection—a slinky, sophisticated cocktail number—in August, but most other details on the clothes remain a mystery. (Yang's reps declined to make her available for comment to me today.) According to the Phipps theory, for the foreseeable future, we'll probably continue to see a more grungy-looking Katie, unless she's wearing Holmes-Yang.

"After all, you can't really believe her stylist would let her walk out of the house wearing those jeans," Phipps posits. "There has to be something going on."

A clothing conspiracy. You read it here first.

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