THE ALEX BEALE REPORT
Fashion Week
Sitting here recalling the many years I’ve spent covering Paris Fashion Week ––I can’t help feeling that maybe I ought to have spent more time covering the fashion “off the catwalk” than that on it. I mean ––I have the distinct feeling that it would have been more revealing about how these big brands insinuate their influence into our everyday lives by covering my colleagues preening themselves in those Parisian eateries ––than maybe covering a brand’s assembly line of preened stick-figures ever could.
For example ––It was day two of Fashion Week ––it was the year Balenciaga brought out those safe “office appropriate” power suits for those darlings who were more upwardly mobile than most ––I know, it hardly narrows it down, but believe me ––this year was the year when Madame Corporate Climber was “oh so de rigueur” ––kitten heels were out and cougar claws were in.
I normally attend these things alone ––but this day I decided to mix things up a little and I had my friend “Zophie” with me ––that’s “Zophie with a Zee” as she’s fond of telling everyone to whom she’s first introduced ––however, despite the “Zee”, her name is actually pronounced the way “Sophie” is in the rest of the Western Hemisphere ––it’s merely that she likes the affectation of its exoticness when it comes to correcting her “lessers” about “proper spelling” and “such like”.
Zophie is an ex-model, but was then working in PR for a shoe manufacturer and was excited to see the latest Dior show ––in which said manufacture was to be featured. Of course, because she was an ex-model she towered over me ––she is about 90% legs ––which seemed, next to my regular proportioned appendages, to be constructed by Monsieur Eiffel himself out of leftover wrought iron that was left around after he built his own more famous tower.
That day ––she was dressed head to expensively manicured toe in her patron designer of the day ––Dior. And once her air kissing buddies met up with her similarly attired ––they looked all the world like National Geographic had discovered a new tribe within the catacombs of the Parisian suburbs ––replete with a lost British explorer who, though friendly with said indigenous group, had unashamedly resisted the urge to “turn native” ––I refer to myself, of course ––being of the opinion that avoiding all temptation to turn up to a show dressed in the attire of the very designer on show, was more than a little offensive to my core principles of individuality, individuation, and personal style ––not to mention the core principle of making every effort to never look like I belonged to a horde of Soccer Hooligans, all dressed in team-strip, off to the footy for an away match.
However, this horde accused their “tag-along” National Geographic explorer of: “looking as though you just escaped a religious order” ––presumably because of my penchant for acetic design; coloured black ––to which I retorted: ”I don’t know about a religious order ––I am rather an acolyte of good taste and not a myrmidon of whatever that day’s patron happens to be ––regardless how unflattering they make me slavishly dress.” To which they all cocked a collective snook.
Of course this “collective” scoffing is not the result of any heart felt belief or, indeed, of much brow furrowing meditation upon the subject of style ––rather it is a form of derisiveness wholly manufactured by those for whom my petite gaggle of leggy odalisques here call their Sultan ––those designers from whom they obtain their free swag-bags at the end of a show, or in a word ––Dior [in this case].
In other words, one can devise this little formula of “scoff”, of which one may on occasion become a victim: “Any one with the temerity to turn up to a named designer’s show without said designer’s name appearing on every item of ones clothing [either seen or unseen; yes Ladies, ones undergarments are also flung into the mix, so to speak], then one is a bande á part.” ––and outsider; to be cast into the nearest corner and pointed at with tutting derision.
However, unlike Zophie with a Zee and her Order of the highly place Garter ––I wholly avoid the branding iron of “the label” ––for that is what it is a “branding iron” ––used to locate your own cattle amongst the herd, the sheep amongst the flock ––the concubine amongst the harem.
Apt? I think so ––for “The Show” has its own pecking order ––where the peckers make the orders, much as they do in a harem ––only within the branded system of the Show it’s a preference system, from front row to rear, based entirely on those who are either unwilling or incapable of pecking back ––front row: favoured concubines of branded celebs [all appropriately suited and booted of course]; middle row: the darling editors and the sweet buyers; back row: clickers, admirers and all those ingénues seeking to fill a concubine spot if only the Sultan would cast a favourable eye in their general direction.
And where do I find myself sitting? Well ––I prefer to be with the clickers: photographers know what their own editors want and when they click, my pen clicks also ––this will be where copy is needed ––they don’t click for every part of the collection, they are waiting for the “trend” ––the trend is what their editor has told them they will be featuring in the next issue of their prospective magazine ––“Today it’s all about shoulder-pads” ––“80s puffballs are back” ––“Power dressing be damned, go Boho.”
When they click on whatever part of the Dior Show which has an editorial line ––and I’ll click my pen, because there is where the copy will be needed ––no click, and your very expensive couture item may as well be something in which you use to wrap your order of cheap chips, since it fits no editor’s line for this season.
And there’s the rub ––it’s this back row which holds the fate of this biannual gamble in their hands ––not the branded concubines in the first ––it never fails to amuse me how much time, money and champagne goes into flattering the Sultan eye with the front row when it is the lowly clickers [of both verities] which hold the Sultan’s dangling purse in their own pursed fingers ––I wonder what will click this season.
As it happened it wasn’t the shoe manufacture Zophie with a Zee represented ––but for the moment, as she air kisses her friends, the Sultan’s “people” and fanes surprise at obtaining a swag-bag of branded goodies ––I refrain from being the harbinger of bad tidings and instead considered clicking my pen to include them as a “must have” ––only used more imaginatively than in the manner I witnessed at the Show.
“Why Alex, you’d do such a thing for one of those scoffers?” Of course I would, after all ––a girl from the back row has a duty of care for all those little ingénues who, dazzled by the Sultan’s gaze, fail to see the axe that awaits every odalisque who, through no fault of their own, bores the Sultan’s gluttony for new flesh to brand and so the fate of leggy Zee would be to become expunged from the harem. I might be able to save her from this fate, although even then she’ll be relegated to the back row ––but better the back row than no row ––fashion week is quiet fun, but entirely no fun when viewed out there in the rain.
“Click!”
