Spring Bling

Dazzling Egos Overwhelm the Senses, And Taste Is the First to Go

Any signs of talent at the Fusha show, which included this purple number, occurred when the designer's husband, Wyclef Jean, played guitar. (Maria Valentino For The Washington Post)

NEW YORK

Sometimes ego triumphs over aesthetics.

That happened in terrible fashion Friday night when Marie Claudinette Jean showed her Fusha collection. There is no reason to jot down the name of this label, which specializes in cocktail clothes and evening gowns, because it is best forgotten. But those who keep abreast of music industry minutiae might recognize the designer's name: She is the wife of musician Wyclef Jean. And that fact succinctly explains how she and her unflattering designs came to be on the runway. She had a show because she had the money to pay the bills and a group of willing souls to fill out the audience.

Wyclef Jean opened her presentation with a guitar solo. What followed was a spring 2005 collection in which the designer offered no evidence that she has a sense of color, a feel for texture, an eye for silhouette or any understanding of the female shape. The models marched along gamely, but even they, with all of the hip swiveling and shoulder throwing at their disposal, could not save the clothing. It was a doomed display of hubris.

It's a lesson that must be repeatedly learned in the fashion industry: Tame the ego or it could leave one looking like a fool.

An hour before the scheduled start of the Baby Phat show on Saturday night, it was relatively calm backstage. A phalanx of hairstylists busily braided the models' hair into delicate ropes. The makeup artists, with an enormous cache of MAC cosmetics spread on counters, dug into little pots of iridescent turquoise and fuchsia eye shadow and swept it dramatically across perfect eyelids. The models' nails were already manicured. They were wearing two-inch fake acrylics that had been painted to resemble slices of wood.

Workers who were to dress the models lined up waiting for their marching orders. Security guards mopped their brows. And television cameras stood poised to get a shot of Kimora Lee Simmons, in all of her dark-haired, long-limbed, speed-talking, tough-diva glory.

Simmons, wife of music mogul Russell Simmons, is the woman whose name is on the label and who is, as she says, "very involved" in the designing of the collection. That is the euphemistic way of saying that she doesn't design the collection, but she makes her opinions loudly known.

She made her backstage entrance dressed in Baby Phat denim pedal pushers, a crocodile-patterned camisole and many, many, many carats of sparkling diamonds on her fingers, wrists and neck. The gems are pieces from several fine-jewelry collections that the company -- sold this year to manufacturing giant Kellwood -- is launching.

Simmons was also wearing a pair of shoes similar to those that the models would wear in the show. Metallic gold with slim leather straps that tie around the ankles, they had approximately a one-inch platform and a dagger of a heel four or five inches high.

"I have on the shoes for all of you guys," said Simmons, a former model. "So I hope nobody falls. If I can do it, you can do it."

But it is one thing to walk slowly and sedately in five-inch heels. It is another to wear them while sashaying under the spotlight in a pair of basket-weave hot pants. During the show, several models wobbled and flailed for their balance. Another landed with a magnificent thud on her tiny derriere.

The Baby Phat collection is known more for the enormousness of Simmons's personality and the ostentatiousness of her lifestyle -- a mob of servants, Bentleys, rose petals in her bathwater -- than for its aesthetic finesse. And in recent months, there have been additions to Simmons's renown: a lawsuit filed against her by a disgruntled former employee and a legal problem involving marijuana possession. She has pleaded not guilty.

Her Imelda Marcos-size collection of shoes and her china from the Versace estate also have been well documented. An enormous billboard of a naked and air-brushed Simmons looms in Times Square. And anyone who has ever seen one of her advertisements is intimately familiar with her two young daughters, who are also trotted down the runway in an example of relentless, nothing-held-back marketing.