Another excellent article by Guy Trebay in the New York Times.
Fashion Diary
Stick Figures and New Math
MILAN
The Yahoo home page pops open with two bulleted stories at the top.
Story No. 1: “Milan Refuses to Ban Skinny Models.” Story No. 2:
“Scientists Map Mouse Brain.” Hidden connection? Discuss.
Probably the least logical aspect of the current controversy
surrounding skinny models is not whether a given city’s garment
industry is able to transform itself overnight into a public health
agency, but how anyone decides which model is too skinny and who is in
charge. The formula being employed here requires one to take a woman’s
weight in pounds divided by her height in inches squared, then multiply
the result by a conversion factor of 703.
Assuming you could find anyone in the average backstage area able to
do the math, who has a scale? You can hardly squeeze another lip liner
into these spaces, which are packed so tightly with photographers,
models, dressers, hairdressers, stylists, grungy model boyfriends and
enterprising creeps.
“Hey, I’m putting on my shoes!” said the model Jessica Stam on
Thursday before the Pucci show, snapping at a man who was focusing his
viewfinder straight up her minidress. “It makes me mad. They’re like:
‘I’m not shooting your crotch. I’m getting your shoes.’ ”
Modesty is a backstage luxury, so one can report that X-ray models
are nothing new. “There are two ways of looking at it,” the seasoned
model Angela Lindvall said at Pucci. “Models are like pro athletes,
like boxers. You box at a certain weight. You don’t make the weight,
you don’t get in the ring.”
Ms. Lindvall is 5-foot-11 and, after two children, weighs 127
pounds. “I used to be a lot scrawnier,” she said. “But you hit 20, and
you start developing a woman’s body. What I worry about is people
exploiting the fact that these girls are insecure, innocent, already
questioning themselves about their bodies.”
A name came up of a celebrated designer, with his own history of
weight issues, who was overheard last season chiding a particular
runway star for beefing up. This woman already looked drawn from a diet
consisting principally of Marlboro Lights, Diet Coke and various other,
uh, substances. The woman took the hint. She took time off to “rest”
and came back so thin you could drive a Hummer through the space
between her thighs.
“They pay lip service to the problem, and then they tell you to send
only this type of girl,” said James Scully, a casting agent, referring
to editors and designers. “It’s not going to change until the styles
do.”
To judge from the spring 2007 offerings, that won’t happen soon. One
criticism being leveled at the clothes offered on the runways is that
they are skewed too young. The most prevalent trend favors dresses
suitable for either anorexic Lolitas or Mia Farrow circa “Rosemary’s
Baby.” In either case, a pact with the devil is required.
Trying to remain adolescent forever is doomed. It takes firm flesh
and even firmer resolve for a woman to walk out of the house wearing a
dress whose hemline barely grazes her buttocks. For those who would
have to consult mom if asked to identify Monica Lewinsky, the current style setter is Lindsay Lohan. Ms. Lohan is barely 20; she dresses as if she’s 45.
• “Shoes are like a throw pillow,” Tom Ford
once said. “You’re going to buy your expensive sofa in a neutral color,
and then throw a wild pillow on it.” Not coincidentally, shoes are the
money spinners at Gucci, where Mr. Ford used to work. They outsell
every other apparel item by miles. And the shoemaker who undoubtedly
sells more shoes than anyone in this city of fashion commerce is Diego
Della Valle, the owner of Tod’s, the leather goods colossus.
Although hardly a word about it turned up in the fashion press, the
Tod’s presentation on Thursday at a contemporary art gallery drew some
1,400 people. The installation — bags, hats, loafers, sneakers and a
niche line of leather apparel designed for the house by Derek Lam — was
titled “Dada,” for no very apparent reason.
Pop would have been a more apposite reference, because Tod’s
pebble-soled Gommino, a basic driving shoe based on the moccasin, is
the footwear equivalent of an Andy Warhol.
Arrayed in a grid along a gallery wall, the Gommino shoes, in bright
colors and varying leathers, resembled one of the Pop artist’s famous
multiples.
Originally a summer shoe, the moccasins were for a time an emblem of
Hollywood chic. Their appeal drooped for a while, as competing labels
like Carshoe horned in on the market, and consumers decided that what
looked cool on Elle Macpherson as she sprinted down 57th Street in
skinny jeans and hauling a massive Birkin bag looked less cool when the
orthodontist bought a similar pair he saw Kevin Costner wearing.
Now — for reasons best known to the capricious sprites invoked when
Heidi Klum says of fashion “One day you’re in, the next day you’re out”
— Tod’s basic moccasins have developed the aura of a favorite piece of
clothing you forgot you owned. This is not merely personal opinion. The
Tod’s Group just released its earnings for the first half of 2006:
$349.8 million, up more than 15 percent over the same period a year
ago.
“We’ve kind of run the gamut in the business of toes, heels,
platforms, wedges, high, low, anything you can name and throw on a wall
to see if it sticks,” Mr. Lam said at the Tod’s presentation. Unlike
the cork-soled Frankenwedges seen on fashion-afflicted women clumping
miserably around Milan, they are also “comfortable and wearable,” he
added with little thought to how radical that idea seemed.
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