The Asylum by Simon Doonan Read Free Book Online

nineties, designers decided that the paying clients were less important than bold-faced notables and entertainment celebrities. So the broads who paid full price were displaced by the freebie-demanding generation of A-, B-, and J-listers.
    Unfair and illogical, right?
    The high-fashion world turned into a gifting suite, a place where beautiful clothes are given or loaned to the only people who can afford them . . . and actually
need
them.
    And what of
les clients
?
    Fortunately there are still women who pay full retail. In my current role as Creative Ambassador at Barneys, I get to travel to the stores and meet these chicks . . . and pay homage to them. In a world where more and more gals are looking for a “press discount” or a “loaner,” the women who are happy and willing to pay full retail are the fashion equivalent of angel investors. If there were any justice in the world, they would be back front and center at every fashion show.
    Off the soapbox and back to my bladder.
    As I flew home after that first trip, I reflected upon my emotional volatility. What had brought my bladder into such close proximity to my eyeballs? And why were so many other people crying too? Was it group hysteria?
    Upon reflection, I realized that what I had experienced was peculiar to La Mode. It is a runway-specific emotion. Let’s call it
fashion verklempt.
    Over the years I have been able to observe the
fashion verklempt
phenomenon repeatedly, both in myself and others. I have tried without success to isolate the triggers for these tear-jerking moments.
    Jetlag is definitely a factor. I can’t recall ever having cried during the New York fashion shows, most of which take place within shrieking distance of my abode.
    Music is a factor. Whether anthemic or operatic, cheerfully folksy or grungily forlorn, there are many genres which can precipitate the
fashion verklempt
phenomenon.
    In certain specific instances, the fashion-show soundtrack has had the effect of making me cry . . . with laughter. Two occasions spring to mind.
    In the early nineties I was sitting at the Chanel show. These were startling, fabulously frenetic affairs. Glamazons like Christy, Linda, Cindy, Naomi, Marpessa, Veronica and Tatiana careened up and down the runways in chaotic, laughing, posing, vamping groups. This was before the grim mechanical goose-stepping trend which now dominates every runway show. (A journalist recently asked me if I thought the runway models of the future would be robots rather than humans. “You clearly have not been to a fashion show in a while,” I replied, adding, “The Cylons are already here.”)
    The Chanel soundtrack consisted, in this particular instance, of mashed-up, sampled music clearly put together by somebody with great flair but a limited knowledge of English. I base this conclusion on the fact that the music-meister elected to incorporate a pornographically abrasive rant. It was a dirty ditty sung by Marianne Faithfull and titled “Why D’Ya Do It?”
    Watching the English speakers in attendance—including the UK and American press—wincing repeatedly as Marianne Faithfull railed at her lover about some chick with “cobwebs up her fanny” and demanded to know why he “spit on her snatch” was an exquisitely amusing
Ab Fab
moment.
    A similar
folie musicale
occurred at a men’s Armani show around the same time. The DJ decided to sample the soundtrack of a Derek Jarman movie. The phrase “rosy-cheeked choirboys in semen-stained cassocks” played over and over again as the handsome besuited young lads walked the runway. While the Asian contingents respectfully watched the show with inscrutable expressions on their faces, we English speakers wept with mirth.
    Speaking of choirboys: There was one memorable occasion when I totally lost it. My bladder and my eyeballs finally merged. It happened at a late-nineties Junya Watanabe