Dear Fashion Industry, Please Stop Showing Boring Clothes At Boring Shows

Last year I praised Rebecca Taylor and BCBG for the wearability of their clothes, but this year I'm going to go ahead and throw out a big "F that!" (What can I say? Fashion is fickle and so am I.) Last night, while I lay awake suffering the effects of jet lag and the adult-onset insomnia of my dog who spent most of the pre-dawn hours padding aimlessly across the bed, it occurred to me that calling runway clothing "wearable" is like calling Siegfried and Roy's tigers "tame." Sure, they might look cute and cuddly, but you never know when they'll turn around and bite you in the jugular. In other words, it's a misnomer and a gross exaggeration. (Also, in the pale cockcrow hours of the morning, the image of a snow-white tiger with a blood-splattered coat proved a nice and almost fashionable juxtaposition to paint-splattered stoles and my imagination just started to run with it.)

Here's the thing - Fashion Week, and the fashion industry in general - makes a really big deal about catering to a really small group of people. Sure, we all follow it ("we all" being yet another gross exaggeration, but I'm feeling very grandiose, writerly, and really one-with-the-world right now so you'll just have to bear with me), and there is, of course, the inevitable trickle-down effect made famous by Meryl Streep's beloved (by me) cerulean-blue monologue in The Devil Wears Prada:

But at the end of the day, the people wearing these clothes, even the most "wearable" clothes of them all, are limited to -- in my inexact, though undoubtedly accurate calculations -- about .0000001% of the population.

So, in the interest of not wasting all of our time, and in light of the fact that the fun in fashion is its frivolity - it's "art", if you will (that's why we all watch Project Runway, no?) - can we please just call a spade a spade here and at the very least make the damn show interesting? There's a reason I love Christian Lacroix and there's a reason that Paris' Couture shows are perennially popular - it's the intricacy, the magic, the whimsy, and--dare I say it?--the unattainability of them that make them interesting. They are decidedly not wearable but instead depict the root of fashion, the art of fashion, the - to get all sentimental on you - heart of fashion.

Boring!

Calvin Klein, Spring 2008

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Brilliant!

John Galliano, Spring/Summer 2006 collection

Boring!

Zac Posen, Fall 2007

Brilliant!

Christian Lacroix, Spring 2008

What I'm proposing is that we (as if I really have a say in the matter) make every show a Couture show - without all the strict hand-sewing requirements, of course. (The definition of couture - haute couture, that is - can be oh-so-ironically found here, which is to say on Polo Ralph Lauren's website, which is to say: the site which is home to the most boringest clothes of them all.) No more collared shirts and pencil skirts and for the love of Chanel: No. More. Ready-To-Wear. Let the buyers see the RTW at their usual showroom appointments and let the rest of us see the fun stuff.

To sum up: If we can't afford to buy the clothes, and if most of us will never, ever fit the clothes, and if even more of us will never have anywhere to wear the clothes, Fashion Industry, then let's please make the process of drooling over them, of ripping them to shreds, of hypocritically mocking them while wearing the Forever 21 knock-offs just that much more bearable by treating these semi-annual displays of over-the-top theater as the exhilarating art its meant to be. You're creative people, Fashion Industry. Start acting like it.

This was originally published on August 20th.

Comments

[fakefur]

Yeah, where's the fun?

[HTN]

BUT Verena (what a fabulous name) von Pfetten, we are Puritans & therefore neither Can nor May be fabulous!

*Lacroix is Divine!

.

[LondonTownNY]

Thank you Verena. I could not agree with you more. What I have learned is simply this, blow off the over hyped Fashion Week Shows in the Tents in Bryant Park. Look for the heart and soul of Fashion Week, emerging designers who have to become increasingly more creative and entrepreneurial to break through. Since their budgets are smaller and they often cannot afford the steep overhead of the shows in Bryant Park, off site at locales around Manhattan is where you will find the next Zac Posen.. GEN ART Fresh Faces of Fashion is a perfect example. Many of these designers yet to have the resources or the name to pull off something in the Tents.

[wrabbitt]

This one is just begging to be said! Who the hell wants to look at "The Dr. Suess" clothing collection? Would real, non Hollywood types actually wear some of this senseless dribble? Halloween is coming! great timing! Try designing clothes with the lights on! Do people actually get paid to design this trash? The Models are going to look good no matter what they wear, (well, almost) Someone went to college to forget what people like? Fashion is easy, comedy is tough!

[LA2000]

Like it or not, if we are headed for a democratic president, its all going to be muted and monochrome. Look at the crazy Punk/New Wave/Dynasty shoulder pads of the republican 80's, the psychedelic of Nixon's 60's-70's, and compare that to the greige, beige, stone, wheat, chalk gray of the Clinton 90's or the wheatgrass, wrap dresses, and cardigans of Carter's 70's.

Republicans freak people out. And they freak out the fashion industry most of all. The clothes prove it.

I will take my greige clothes and a stable (democrat) president any day over a republican and a Christian Lacroix runway circus.

[Fudgefase]

People only watch fashion shows to see if the models legs can still hold their bodies up anyway.

[dadw5boys]

Well boring is what life becomes with a Republican in the Whitehouse. We all are just waiting to get screwed so everything becomes boring.

Need life them Vote Democratic. Just want money well you can vote for the same old crap.

[chronic]

Laura B ush and her boooooring grey pants suites is an insult to all Fir st Ladies that came before her!!

[bavb63]

i think many american designers are unwilling to take the risks that european designers take because it about mass dollars over here. it's all business, very little art.

[likeicare]

I think it was Gaugan (spelling?) who said, "All art is either revolution or plagiarism."

While I'm not sure I totally agree with that statement, it certainly seems true for fashion-as-art.

[ChicagoDMT]

Lacroix is the fashion equivalent of gold capped teeth. Sometimes it costs a lot of money to look stupid.

[Mondayboy]

That is really funny!!

[RJII]

luv everyone, but i'm so tired of gay men dictating what's fashionable for women. 99% of what's considered high fashion is garage.

[Mondayboy]

U mean garbage? Or garage sales?

[nastyvirus]

The New Style Of Fascism In The 21st Century

[bethinCary]

Sorry Vrena.
I like monochromatic-so I love the grey.

[SearchEngines]

The examples given were not boring.......

The presentation should not compete with the fashions.

For the more subtle designs - that is essential

[AgathaX]

The idea that clownishness is the only sort of design able to get folks salivating is insane and disregards decades of the most chill inducing design. Fortunately, unless you're the parent of a 9 year old you don't have to play either/or. But what the heck, I pick Zac Posen.