It's Fashion Week AGAIN! Oh, My GOD!

DAHLINGS –

Just when I wasn’t looking, Fashion Week Fall 2008 crept up on me! Yes, I know I have simply STACKS of invitations on my desk that my moronic assistant didn’t bother answering (or even tell me about). It was with horror that I awoke this morning in my silk-sheeted bed, Bucky nestled beside me, and realized that Fashion Week started TWO DAYS AGO!

Wait until that assistant comes in tomorrow…I’m going to make her life a living hell, let me tell you.

The most I can do for now is give you my impressions from looking over the shows on the Internet…a poor substitute, I know, but better than no coverage at all, n’cest pas?

First, that continuing blight on the fashion landscape, Yigal Azrouel, who can always be counted to present a large collection of boring, sexless fashion. Suddenly, the designs on “Project Runway” seem like works of GENIUS. He continued with his strange brand of scruffy androgyny:




I thank the Gods that be that I was not in attendance. I might have pelted the models with chocolate-covered cherries, and started a stampede (that got me ejected from the Erin Fetherston show a few years back).

For her show this year, Nicole Miller claimed to have been inspired by Joan of Arc. (That's Jeanne d'Arc to those of us who parle Francais.) One supposes there are worse inspirations than a hallucinating religious maniac who hears voices and ends up getting killed at the age of nineteen. Actually, that profile would fit quite a few modern pop singers, wouldn't it? It was a nice show, but not one of her best; in fact, one has a rather hard time connecting this puffer jacket gone wild with Catholicism:



Tonight we close with a rather frightening image from the Alexander Wang show. As much as I may rail in this blog against the terrifyingly thin models that stagger down the runways, it seems that nothing will stop the shrinking. Today when I at last arrived at Bryant Park, there were the usual paramedics armed with Ensure, cocaine and dextroamphetamine. The show must go on.



Ciao,
Elisa & Bucky the Wonderdog

As Fashion Week Continues, The Funny Hats March On!

DAHLINGS -

I could kill that idiot of an assistant of mine! I send her my notes from my Blackberry, and the fool DELETES two of the shows I attended on Thursday!

Bad enough that she made utter HASH of the names Badgley Mishka, but then to ERASE my deathless impressions of Stephen Burrows and Miss Sixty! She knew enough to be nowhere in sight when I reeled in on Thursday night after the after-party at Fashion Rocks. (Note: Carrie Underwood again displayed the common touch, which seems to be her strong suit.)



Miss Sixty displayed utterly ridiculous acid-washed jeans, low-waisted and short. Only the Olsen twins could pull them off, and that is being charitable. The hats were, for the most part, large-brimmed and transparent. Really, the only redeeming feature were the enormous envelope clutch bags.

I much preferred the Burrows show, if only because I love bright colors and I needed some cheering up. The dresses were lively and sweet, and more important; there wasn’t a hat to be seen!

Naturally I had written much more, but it is all GONE.

And my assistant was not in the office yet when I set out this morning. DAMN!

Nevertheless, I bundled up Bucky in his hand-made Dooney & Bourke carrier and hopped into the limo. This year, perhaps to make up for the starved appearance of the models, there are abundant sweet treats everywhere. The models merely stare at them, a little drool escaping their pale lips. And most of the fashion industry folk look as though—how do I describe it? —as if they are looking at the opposite of crystal meth. But I’ve been thoroughly enjoying myself. Too bad poor little Bucky cannot have chocolate…but he did get a praline or two.

Behnaz Sarafpour seems to have gotten back onto her medication. Which has also had the effect of dulling whatever creative faculties she possessed. Dozens of dull identical shirtwaist silhouettes, although she had her own contribution of the Fashion Week 2008 theme: funny hats.




Max Azaria’s show was quite nice if you like lingerie, and I do, but I could not quite imagine it as daywear. Although the heterosexual men in the audience, what few there were, seemed to be able to. As I watched the models march down the pink runway to the tune of "I Like to Play," their expressions numb with misery, the thought came to mind: "Would it kill them to smile?"

Perhaps it would. Perhaps they would simultaneously combust or some such.

The major commotion at the show was caused by celebrity void Nicole Richie, who, it is rumored, is pregnant and has what is now tastelessly called a “bump” showing. If indeed this gaunt attention addict is pregnant, we can expect some very special attention at the preemie ward at Lenox Hill hospital.

Meanwhile, Demi Moore was at the Proenza Schouler show at the Armory, surrounded by bodyguards and looking astonishingly wide-eyed at close range. (In fact, one is not sure she can actually blink.) My revered Anna Wintour was there, in what appeared to be a vintage dress! Oh, be still, my heart!

I am not a fan of this design team, and their choice of layered vests over various...things was only redeemed by the funny hat of choice for this show: tall military helmets with feathers. (Yes, one can quite imagine the fashionable young things at luncheon getting their helmets caught in the chandeliers and hanging plants.)



Ciao for now,
Elisa & Bucky the Wonderdog