The Asylum by Simon Doonan Read Free Book Online Page A

show. The soundtrack was supplied by a pink-cheeked prepubescent English choirboy. Live and in person, the young lad sang hauntingly beautiful Elizabethan songs—a cappella, no mike—while the avant-garde Watanabe creations floated past. There was something overwhelmingly touching about his earnestness, and about that impossibly perfect voice which was just months away from cracking and disappearing into the mists of time. Blub. Blub.
    The biggest group weep fest—the wailing wall of the
fashion verklempt
—occurred at the 1989 Romeo Gigli show. Mr. Gigli was one of the most influential fashion designers of the late twentieth century. He popularized a whole new wrappy way of dressing women. His color palate—dusky maroon, Moroccan apricot, cat-poo brown and acid green—had such far-reaching influence that even the famous Gap pocket T’s began to be hued accordingly. He introduced nifty suit cuts, flat-front narrow pants, and sumptuous colors and fabrics for men. Like Christian Lacroix, he burned very bright and made a huge impact.
    Back to the weep fest.
    The Carrousel du Louvre was filled with a soaring Verdi soundtrack. The models wore majestic robes in rich browns and burgundys. The entire collection was inspired by the mosaics of Ravenna depicting the wild and mysterious Empress Theodora of Byzantium. The gals were festooned with necklaces made from oversize handblown Murano glass beads. Each wrapped and draped outfit was more stately than the next. The presentation was impressive, so impressive that, come the finale, the audience was delivering a standing ovation and weeping, weeping, weeping. Even the hard-boiled retailers were
fashion verklempt
.
    And the bladder fest continues . . .
    Even as I write, I am hearing reports of front-row editors sobbing at the beauty of the Haider Ackermann fall collection. Ditto Raf Simons. His dénoument at maison Jil Sander sent more than a few fashion insiders lurching for their Kleenex.
    What would toothless Grampy say about all this? Would he declare it all to be a boil far from his arse? Would he denounce us for our frivolous way of life and condemn us all to drink beer out of shitey rags?
    Who cares! So what if we are all a bunch of
verklempt
nellies! So what if our bladders are located too near our eyeballs. At least we have all our own teeth . . . or most of them.

suzy menkes’s
saucisson
    SUZYMENKES’S ROCKABILLY pompadour hairdo has been through a lot. It has seen presidents come and go. It has seen shoulder pads go in and out and then come rushing back in again. Ditto platform shoes, bustiers, jewel tones and tiaras. It has seen Jil Sander leave her company and return years later in triumph. It has seen the shock of the new and the tedium of the greige. It has seen models falling off runways and designers falling off the wagon. That legendary glamorous roll of coiffure has seen it all, the great and the good, the prosaic and the avant-garde, the power and the glory, the naked and the damned. If it could only talk . . .
    If Suzy Menkes’s hairdo could talk, it would tell tales of glamour and jubilation, of torn seams and broken dreams. One day I hope to get some alone time with Suzy Menkes’s sausage. I am sure that Suzy will let it go out for a playdate with me. I like to think that she would trust me to take good care of her signature coiffure.
    While Suzy stays at home, banging out more of her brilliant fashion commentary—she is
the
most insightful, knowledgeable fashion commentator of our age—we, the sausage and I, will ensconce ourselves in the corner of a quiet bar on the Rive Gauche. I will ply the sausage with absinthe and I won’t stop until it has coughed up all its gothic secrets and mysterious memories. Suzy has always been very discreet, but I am sure her sausage will spill the beans.
    I might start by asking the sausage about a near-death experience which happened back in the