DosViolines
far from home...
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Another article from nytimes.com
Frivolity Revs Up as the Big Week Starts
By GUY TREBAY
Published: September 9, 2005
WHEN a reporter happened upon Patricia Hearst Shaw in the front row of an InStyle magazine runway presentation on Wednesday evening with her hand up the hem of a woman's dress, Mrs. Hearst-Shaw, the former socialite, former Symbionese Liberation Army member, former federal prisoner and sometime movie actress, gave a pert laugh. "Oh, it's all right," said Mrs. Hearst-Shaw, who was straightening the dress lining. "I'm her mother.
Christopher Smith for The New York Times Ali Sheedy at the InStyle party for Fashion Week.
Christopher Smith for The New York Times A patron gets the troubled-times Evian spa treatment.
And so began another New York Fashion Week, the twice-a-year carnival, where hard-core commerce meets heedless frivolity, the apparatus of hype swells to gargantuan proportions and the city seems overrun with It girls and between-gigs actors and Russian models bearing an uneasy resemblance to underage p*rn performers and with all the soldiers in that brisk modern army that toils so fearlessly in the trenches of marginal celebrity.
"Do you know who's sitting right in front of you?" the actor Callie Thorne whispered into her cellphone at the InStyle party, which was called Clothes We Love and featured so many outfits that one was forced to conclude that the editors suffer from love addiction. "Dennis Leary," Ms. Thorne hissed to a friend on her own phone across the room. Moments earlier Mr. Leary had entered the lobby of the Time Warner Center, transformed into a catwalk through the liberal use of Mylar and fashion pixie dust. "No alcohol or booze?" he asked.
The booze, and plenty of it, came later at the party following the show. Flutes or splits of Champagne drunk through straws are never far from hand in Fashion Week, which officially starts today. (And how have child welfare authorities failed to notice the backstage guzzling by teenage models?) A reporter experiences the temptation to grab a tray of glasses from a passing waiter and drink until the senses are dulled to conversations in which the pressing issue is what flat boot is the right one to wear this fall.
It has been said before and is worth repeating: "Prêt-à-Porter," Robert Altman's 1994 movie about the fashion business, was no parody. Insiders found the depiction cartoonlike. It was. No one who has ever heard a designer describing what is generously termed inspiration can really claim that lines like the one Richard E. Grant uttered in the movie are that outrageous. "It's plastic, it's rad, it's prêt-à-go-go-go-go," said Mr. Grant's character, who wore pancake makeup, eyeliner and a spit curl glued across his forehead. Believe it or not, that person exists.
And so, even when much of the nation's attention is focused on the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, there are those this week who will cling to their determination to put across the wonders of the Maidenform Dream Bra. (Tagless, made of two-way stretch foam, it has a sweetheart neckline and is available in sizes 32A to 40DD, just so you know.) They will doggedly push the latest Robb Report findings on the highest end of the luxury market (as divined by Carol Brodie, the publication's chief luxury officer) at a Chelsea Piers event offering a select group (the only kind, really) a chance to smoke hand-rolled Zino cigars, to try on $1 million worth of jewelry and to ride in a Grand-Craft mahogany runabout and a Rolls-Royce Phantom.
And they will be pleased to explain to passers-by who stop at the Evian Pop-Up Spa on Fifth Avenue at 43rd Street how important indulgences like a hot-stone massage using only rocks soaked in pure imported Evian can be in the aftermath of tragedy.
"Especially in troubled times, when people are suffering, and you are thinking of water," said Marjan Mehrkhast, an Evian spa consultant, "it's crucial to think about your health."
Not everyone involved with Fashion Week is oblivious to outside events, of course. Among the philanthropic tie-ins for the InStyle runway show was one for hurricane relief. And a number of manufacturers have quietly made donations of clothing to the hurricane's victims.
"When these things happen, you're forced to put fashion in perspective," said Mary Gehlhar, the fashion director of Gen Art, a nonprofit organization that showcases new talent in fashion, film and the visual arts. The Gen Art show, which takes place tonight, is the culmination of 10 months' work for the young designers. Still, "you realize that fashion is important to the creative life of the city," she added. "It's an important driver of the economy, it's important to the young designers, but it's not nearly as important as basic survival when you've lost your home and everything you have."
As Marcia Ammeen, the marketing director of Neema Clothing Ltd., the owner of Halston and the maker of Haspel men's wear, which donated 1,400 pairs of trousers and 1,000 suits to hurricane victims, said, "Fashion to them is not anything right now, but we wanted to try and give them something decent besides jeans and T-shirts to get their confidence back, go look for jobs and rebuild their lives."
Early this week Diane Sustendal, a style writer who now characterizes herself as formerly of New Orleans, joined a group of volunteers at the Tabasco company in New Iberia, La., cutting up chickens and cabbage for cole slaw to help feed hundreds of refugees camped in the local city park. "There were ex-debs next to pepper pickers, caterers next to convention planners, a university fund-raiser, a dentist and men who could drive long hauls working side by side creating what would be a hot meal to distract ourselves from our problems," Ms. Sustendal wrote by e-mail. Among her problems is where to live in the months until she can go back home.
After they had finished cooking, Ms. Sustendal wrote, her small group took itself down to the local big-box store to begin putting together new wardrobes to replace the clothes they had been wearing for days. What they came up with might not have been runway material. But in the mix of funky post-storm Prada, Michael Kors and the best of Wal-Mart's sale rack, she and her friends experienced an unanticipated spike in optimism as they listened for news that might tell them whether their homes were "safe or looted or gone."
this is going to be the ultimate laughing stock, it is showing right? 
Despit some qualms,I quite like his style...hopefully though he's done something different than the last two seasons...something strong like his first two. I suppose,however,we'll be seeing it on his web site,only,come Milano or Paris.
