catch up: fashion is serious business

comedian sasha baron cohen hit the runway last week in milan in character as bruno, a flamboyant fashion reporter. cohen, who trespassed onto designer agatha ruiz de la prada's spring/summer 2009 runway, was screamed at by models, tackled by security, and arrested only to find he was carrying no identification.

the event has been on every major fashion blog, reported on by various news sites, and agatha ruiz de la prada has been shown some very special publicity.



is fashion serious business? i asked this last week when journalist joel stein, sent to report on new york fashion week, returned to say that he has "been to political panels, criminal trials, locker rooms of playoff losers, graduate English classes, and the Ron Paul convention, and [he's] never seen people take themselves quite this seriously." stein certainly seems to believe that the fashion world has gotten a little too big for its (high-waisted-skinny-leg) britches.

on one hand, cohen's appearance was a distracting interruption in the middle of the designer's show. after working tirelessly to present this season, the main focus of the event is that a british comedic actor showed up with a boot strapped to his leg. one barely notices the yellow print dress on the model - she's just blurry background.

on the other hand, no one was hurt. nothing was ruined. cohen's parody of runway fashion points out how frequently ironic the term 'ready-to-wear' is, as many collections shown during fashion month are anything but wearable. though he was removed from the premise quickly enough, there certainly is part of me that thinks, "wow - he kind of really did look like a male model."

it seems that stein isn't the only person out there, though, who thinks that the fashion crowd might be taking things a little too seriously these days. unlike stein, who is not known as a fashion journalist, blogger kat walks of glamcanyon also found fault in the somber tone of fashion week. she writes "today was my first day of paris fashion week and so far i am unimpressed. it's all business, little to no fun. people are dead serious... 7 days to go. 7 days in which things can only get better, i should hope." even walks, who loves fashion enough to blog about it, finds that it's all just a little too stiff.

is fashion serious business? so far the yes side is up by two.

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