Who's afraid of Big Bad Fashion Week?
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Version 0 of 1. Question: which of the following, in your nightmare version of New York, would you rather find yourself trapped in? The fringes of the St Patrick’s Day parade, where large groups of people (now featuring: gay people!) sport trumped-up Irish heritage, wave green beads in your face, then fall over sideways? Downtown during SantaCon? Or, this coming week in September, when the raising of white tents in the city signals the ascent of a less rowdy but in some ways more obnoxious group – at the centre of the fashion world? New York Fashion Week, which is about to clog up the sidewalks around my neighbourhood in Lincoln Center and throughout parts of lower Manhattan, creeps up on you every year until the day comes when, wandering around Soho or the outer reaches of Bryant Park, you suddenly realise you’re taking up the space of three other pedestrians, all of whom have your air rights. It’s not as if New York, ordinarily, is a dishevelled town. I’m currently in London, where finding two wardrobe items that vaguely go together is over-thinking it and shooting for a Look is probably prelude to a breakdown. People are neater in New York and, if not exactly more fashionable, certainly more concerned with whether the black of the suit jacket is the same black as the black of the suit pants. (British people’s eyes literally can’t pick out this distinction, like colour-blind dogs.) Even in New York, however, the fashion crowd, clutching huge cups of Starbucks and staggering beneath the weight of their asymmetrical blouses, makes everyone else feel untidy, the mere fact of breathing, in the presence of these people, a seemingly vulgar excess. This year, the emphasis is on performance rather than just fashion, with Spike Jonze directing a 30-minute, one-act play for a label called Open Ceremony instead of a traditional show, and various designers promising more than the usual strut down the catwalk. As Vanessa Friedman notes in the New York Times, Polo Ralph Lauren is describing the unveiling of its new collection as an “event”, not a show, and the Paris fashion museum has come up with something called Models Never Talk, an opportunity for seven French supermodels to break their silence and, finally, tell the world stories it just hasn’t been hearing. I’m not disparaging models here. Anyone who has watched successive seasons of America’s Next Top Model (which professional models thoroughly despise) can grasp that it’s not an easy job. Who among us would volunteer to stand, half-naked, in front of a studio full of people, all staring and chin-stroking over the question of whether or not we are sufficiently beautiful? Earlier this year, I interviewed Cameron Russell, the Italian Vogue cover girl and face of Saint Laurent. And as she pointed out, sensibly, most jobbing models are women from modest to poor backgrounds who have taken this one ticket out of unpromising beginnings and aren’t particularly deserving of ridicule. “We’re talking about women from Russia and Brazil, many of whom grew up in poverty,” she said. “Most of them dropped out of school early and speak English as a second language. So when people say models are so stupid, I tend to think: if you were a 17 year old speaking a second language and from a place where education wasn’t paramount, it’s unlikely you’d know how to speak to the media, either.” Plus, all industries take themselves far too seriously. Journalism is not exactly light on people strutting about thinking the shape of the world rests on their contributions. Anyway, for the next week or so New York will be awash. You can either hide out in Brooklyn, enjoy the spectacle or stage a protest of some kind. Personally, being surrounded by all that fanatical grooming makes me want to put on a shapeless Berghaus fleece, hook a Costco freezer bag over one arm, and stand on a street corner, eating a burrito. What can I say? It’s a look. |