The Emperor's New Clothes. Seriously.
In N.Y., a Sublime Disregard For Pointing Out the Ridiculous

By Robin Givhan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 6, 2007

NEW YORK, Feb. 5 -- Designers here are unveiling their fall 2007 collections and already there have been moments that validate the most outlandish portrayals of the fashion industry in popular culture. There has been harmless silliness as well as evidence of the industry's unnerving disengagement from the society it serves. All of it falls under the heading of creative license.

Saturday afternoon, designer Alexandre Herchcovitch sent a group of dresses and tops down his runway at Bryant Park that looked like they had been constructed from black plastic garbage bags. No one laughed. No one's mouth curled into a sneer of dismissal. Instead, the crowd remained respectfully silent. If a designer would like to publicly ponder the notion of "woman as compost," the industry will give him his space. Fashion is fueled by creative expression, so goes the established thinking. To stifle that freedom is to hinder the industry's growth.

No one's health is likely to be damaged by an ugly dress. But the disappointing panel discussion, hosted by the Council of Fashion Designers of America Monday morning, on eating disorders among models and the pressures on them to maintain a reed-thin figure, was not so benign. The smartest voice in the room belonged to the model Natalia Vodianova, best known for her work with Calvin Klein, who was seated in the audience. She talked plainly about her dysfunctional relationship with food, her unhealthy weight loss and the negative feedback from designers when she regained some of that weight.

The four panelists seemed intent on thanking the CFDA for the opportunity to participate in the event and offering reassurance that they were not out to inhibit the designers' creative freedom. No one addressed the responsibilities that come with such boundless artistic expression. No one focused on the core issue of why designers even want to use models who are so thin that their appearance raises fears about ill-health. The presentation hit rock bottom when the physical fitness trainer and panelist David Kirsch offered: "I'd rather see a healthy size 4 than an unhealthy size 0."

Fashion is a business that is willing to put up with a lot. Too much, maybe. No idea is dismissed as being too ludicrous.

On the BCBG Max Azria runway Friday, a model walked out wearing a quilted jacket that folded open in front like the pages of a book. The jacket didn't have lapels as much as it had wings. It was knee-slappingly ridiculous, but the audience watched it pass with the dispassion of the comatose. Azria followed up with jumpsuits that opened across the tush like a pair of chaps. The average person would have reared back in hysteria. The fashion crowd didn't blink.

The industry has worked so hard to be an open and nurturing ground for the eccentrics and the oddballs that it has grown numb. It's proud of the fact that it is never shocked. The goofy and the sublime are greeted with equal good manners. What fashion needs is a lesson in how to boo.

A little of that know-how would have been helpful at the Jackie Rogers show. Rogers once walked the runway for Coco Chanel. Today, she is a voluptuous woman with a brown pixie, but with the height and carriage of a model. She is known for cocktail dresses and evening gowns worn by women who have enough money and vanity to allow them to enter their golden years with few of their original parts.

Rogers showed her collection at Scores West, which is a "gentleman's club." It is hard to resist a womenswear show set in a strip joint, especially one that was recently raided on prostitution charges. The models -- dressed in patent-leather-trimmed dresses, look-at-me fitted suits and riotously colored devore velvet blouses -- strutted through the crowd and posed on a wooden stage decorated with red hearts.

A brass pole was positioned prominently on one side of the room. Would one of the models suddenly fling her leg around it and twirl? And here's a more important question: Would the show be better or worse without the clothes?

When the show ended, Rogers took her bows in a black pantsuit and white shirt with a large, dramatic collar. Surrounded by her models -- all fully clothed -- she looked like a madam overseeing the girls at her bordello.

This city is filled with designers trying to find the sweet spot between clothes that are so boring one can hardly work up the energy to disparage them and clothes that are so ridiculous that one is left trying to figure out where to begin the criticism. Would it be too cruel to find fault with a designer's basic concept? Erin Fetherston, one of the recipients of an Ecco Domani grant, showed her collection Sunday. The cash awards from the wine company are intended to help young designers mount a runway show. Fetherston has a light hand and a passion for feminine, girlish clothes. She is a tall, lanky platinum blonde from San Francisco on whom skirts as short and sweet as a tutu have a frothy charm. But Fetherston has few doppelgangers in this world. Most women -- even those who are just entering their 20s -- would look like they were wearing their Barbie's clothes.

Another Ecco Domani winner, Tom Scott, seemed to be heading into troubled waters based on the description of his womenswear collection he shared a couple days before his Saturday presentation. Scott, a dark-haired fellow with a medium build and an earnest manner, described how he deconstructs his knitwear and then puts it back together in a process similar to collage or assemblage or some other fancy term for cut and paste. He mentioned how his models' hairstyles were inspired by stacks of hay. Who could resist a presentation that promised hay hair?

Scott proved that sometimes what sounds silly can be beautiful.

He had a firm hand on his inspiration, never allowing the artistic part of his personality to overtake his more rational side. His knitwear served as a perfect example of what designers mean when they talk about their work as being "organic." His sweaters are pieced together in the most natural way, as if it all happened instinctively and without a tortured thought process. The weave of his cardigans is varied and his seams sometimes look unfinished. The sweaters twist around the body as if the wearer has burrowed into them rather than merely slipped them on. They are artful, but they do not look like art projects.

Another designer who focused on knits was Victor Glemaud, who traded in his day job in fashion public relations to become a menswear designer. Glemaud is a tall, African American man with a long, narrow, Tommy Tune physique. For himself, he favors lean silhouettes, expressive colors and designs with a sense of whimsy. On the day of his show he was wearing pink pants. Looking at the collection is like peeking into Glemaud's own closet.

In a tableau vivant of 10 models, he showed boyish long johns in shades of gray but also in bright red with candy-colored ribbon snaking down the sides. The long johns were a charming way of getting around a more fundamental problem for so many new designers. He simply did not have the finances to produce the finely tailored trousers he would have liked.

Sweaters are the heart of his collection. There were cardigans in shades of green and yellow, for instance. Glemaud plays with the subtleties in the hues, mixing Kelly green with a slightly deeper forest green in a single sweater. The knitwear is spirited without being childish, practical but not boring.

On the afternoon before his Sunday evening show, the designer Phillip Lim was surprisingly calm as he talked about the inspiration for his collection. He was stuck on the word "funny," which he used to describe everything from a double-faced woolen coat in sober tan to a red patent leather bow tie.

Lim is an example of the sort of designer that the American fashion industry seems uniquely able to produce. His collection, 3.1 Phillip Lim, is fashionable but accessible. It has a singular point of view, and yet owning a piece from the collection does not require that one debate writing a check for the mortgage or a swing coat.

An overcoat from his fall collection will sell for about $700 -- a piece of information that Lim, unlike most designers, offers without prodding.

Lim said his collection is meant to appeal not only to a variety of aesthetic sensibilities but also to a range of body types.

"The clothes are never so outlandish that you feel you can't pull them off," he says. "I know that's unfashionable, but I'm not pretentious. I don't have an ego about it."

The collection was titled "Pedigree Minus Prudence," which translates into easy-to-wear shapes with oddball details and lighthearted touches that keep austere shapes from looking matronly. His full trousers are cropped, his jackets hang away from the body and swing with ease. Gray knit coats are brightened with gold studs that are used for buttons. He has mismatched buttons on a khaki overcoat and weaves slender gold chains into the cuffs of blouses.

With his collection, Lim says he's trying to express a "new modernity." He was inspired by the idea that we are products of our environment as well as products of our own imagination. And then he shrugs. He can't keep up the patter.

"I'm not an intellectual designer," he says. "At the end of the day, it comes down to 'Does it make my butt look good?' "

Yes, it does.