by Jerome du Bois, with Catherine King
On November 11, Catherine and I sat in a darkened hall and listened to Dennita Sewell, Fashion Curator at the Phoenix Art Museum, describe her latest exhibition, "After Dark: 100 Years of the Evening Gown." She accompanied her talk with a slideshow, and at the end, as the last slide appeared on the screen, representing the very latest, most recent evening fashion, Catherine drew her breath in so sharply the woman in front of us turned her head curiously. I was curious, too. On the screen was a shop window with dim views of dresses behind it and, inscribed on its glass face, one word: "Rodarte." Catherine whispered to me, "Those fat sisters." Ah! Now I knew what she was talking about.
Rodarte --Kate and Laura Mulleavy-- is the latest word in bad fashion, in the line of Alice Roi and Heatherette and Imitation of Christ. And Dennita Sewell was all excited about them. Rodarte was the cherry on top of her Hundred Years of Eveningwear lecture. Sewell gushed breathlessly about them being featured on the cover of WWD after just a few days in New York City. The story of their attainment of the pinnacle of fashion after twelve months of struggling with their art was obviously being hyped up to the stuff of legend.
After Ms. Sewell's presentation, we went to look at Rodarte's contribution to the evening gown exhibition. It was crap-- a shapeless shift with pinked clown flowers.
Fashion is going the way of the rest of the culture, promoting mediocrity and ugliness, and denigrating elegance and good taste. Time after time I'm astounded when Catherine calls me to the computer, or shows me a page in a fashion magazine, to look at some of these designers' creations, or the designers themselves. Here's Rodarte, for example, at the presentation of one of their collections (they only have two, so far). Two dumpy women with no personal pride. Here's another picture of one of them, at a party. It's easy to see why they don't wear their own clothes; they wouldn't fit in any of them.
Catherine showed me picture of Marc Jacobs at a party in camo pants and an obscene t-shirt. There's a gay-bear pair of fashion designers, too; two fat guys in lumberjack outfits with snap-on suspenders. Their dungarees were even dirty. One of the Rodarte sisters said recently that the biggest fashion faux pas is to dress as if you care "too much" about your personal style.
Catherine showed me a fashion spread of nice satin party dresses in which every model wore a grandpa sweater over the dress. Another one where someone wore a hoodie over an evening gown. My point is this: they're going out of their way to uglify beauty.
At the debut of the Phoenix Opera in September we saw a woman wearing a very nice, expensive looking white jacket with hair dirtier and more disheveled than if one drove all the way over from L. A. with the roof of one's convertible down. Or Rocky Point, more like it. Not tousled, not teased. Her cowlicks were showing, for heaven's sake-- at the opera!
Yes, I know that dirty hair, French-style, is all the rage, but that's the point. It's a choice to look skanky, a socially offensive affectation-- "gotta love me-- warts and all!" It's like wearing motorcycle boots with beautiful, expensive eveningwear-- also de riguer.
Gotta love me. That's the key: the aggressive, bullying demonstration of bad style, to bring the self-loathing to the surface. They don't even hide it anymore.
Posted by Jerome at December 5, 2006 09:20 AM | TrackBack