ACCIDENT ON THE RUNWAY

What all the fashionable secretaries
wear to work.

Of all the worlds that may exist in this universe, none is more presumptuous than the fashion world. 

Several times a year, time stops as cadaverous women and vacant-eyed men wearing clothes nobody in real life will ever own traipse down runways before rushing backstage for a luncheon of vodka and a lick of a Tic Tac. 

The only people who appear to be taking these freak shows more seriously than the models are the audiences. I knew that U2's Bono was officially a chump when he started attending fashion parades several years ago. 

Anyone who claims to be saving the world while gazing earnestly at these walking corpses is pulling a fast one on us. But not so much a fast one as the designers themselves, who know damn well that they can put a barrels over the models hobo-style and get a standing ovation. 

I'll go with D.W. Griffith's fashion style any day.

It's not enough to design useless clothes anymore, though. Now you've got to gin up controversy, sometimes accidentally, usually by design -- as if requiring women to possess the body build of 14 year-old boys isn't controversial enough. The latest donnybrook comes courtesy of a graduate of New York's Fashion Institute of Technology. 

Before going further, I must object to associating the word "technology" with fashion. As D.W. Griffith said upon the formation of Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, "What art? What science?" 

And so I ask, "What fashion? What technology?" Although "institute" is close enough to "institution" for my approval, since the clothes look like they were designed in a lunatic asylum.

The work of a college graduate. 

F.I.T. recently hosted a fashion show by graduate Junkai Huang. The accessories worn by the models (pictured on the right), Huang said, "were intended to be reflections of my own body and perceptions of their large proportions, which should be celebrated and embraced." 

If this really is a case self-perception, then someone ought to get Huang to a shrink stat, or at least provide him with a better brand of acid. (I hear microdot is pretty good.)

Anyway, you know who didn't celebrate and embrace this look? Amy LeFevre, a black model with self-respect ("black" and "self-respect" being rare commodities in the fashion world). The accessories supplied were not only hideous and imbecilic, but arguably racist -- although Ms. LeFevre would argue with "arguably", and I certainly won't argue with her on that score. 

Amy LeFevre and her test shot before she rightly
decided this shit had to go.

It's amusing that the dresses apparently weren't ghastly enough as they were. (You can find full-length shots here.) Huang created a style that evoked a time when black people were considered part simian.

Well, these lips are black, so it can't be racist. But it's still
stupid.

Now, it could very well be that Huang didn't realize the history of this look. On the other hand it should have been obvious, particularly concerning Ms. LeFevre, that it would make him think twice. But that would imply Huang thought once.

The excuse for his faux-pas is quite simple. Huang claims that time prevented him from creating the accessories himself, so Mary Davis (Dean of the School of Graduate Studies) and Jonathan Kyle Farmer (head of the MFA Fashion Department) advised him to buy the stuff on Amazon. (College kids appalled by the working conditions in Amazon warehouses have a change of heart when it's too much of a bother to go shopping in person.) 

Good dean that she is, Davis claims she never even saw the stuff before the models sashayed down the runway. I hardly knew Junkai Huang. Is that a boy or a girl? Both she and Kramer have been put on administrative leave. An outside lawyer has been hired to "investigate" the incident, which is what usually happens these days for any event more serious than a clogged bathroom drain.

Would you take fashion advice from this crowd?

Davis's lawyer is upset that her client has already been judged guilty, thus sullying her "stellar reputation" in the "academic and fashion communities", which makes me glad my community is over 60 blocks north of F.I.T. 

Davis shouldn't worry. Another thing D.W. Griffith said about his profession holds true even more for the fashion industry: "Movies are written in sand; applauded today, forgotten tomorrow." That is, until the next time a fashionista wants to kick up some more sand into people's eyes.

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