Polygamist Chic

Tom Kolovos, NBC5 Street Team
I owe John Galliano an apology.

I’ve never really been one that cared much for the theatrics of fashion. I’m far more impressed by the actual garments and their construction, fit and wearability. Many of the fashion shows in New York, London, Milan and Paris are not presentations of visionary design but bi-annual excercizes in egotistical masturbation for coked up designers, models, fashion editors and assorted courtesans.

Gosh Tom, you say, doesn’t that sound fun?

Apparently, not anymore to Donatella Versace who, having recently kicked her decade/s long habit with blow, produced the most extraordinary spring couture show in recent memory.

One of my absolute favorite designers, the late Franco Moschino, used to call the whole idea of runway presentations “the fashion vampiress” because it really does suck the blood out of real creativity when you have to present a collection regardless of whether you have anything worthwhile to present.

Today, a client sent me an AP article on the polygamist wives and it brought to mind two of my least favorite designers, John Galliano and Marc Jacobs. (Yes, I am a fashion heretic.)

I’ve never really cared for Galliano’s vision of how women should dress and all the theatrics he engages in on his runway for Dior have never been able to distract me from that point . (As Leann Womak once sang, “I just hate her, I’ll think of a reason later.”)

I can be much more direct about my dislike for Marc Jacobs. Copying other people’s work (sure, you can call it paying homage, if you want to look the other way) and putting your label on it year after year, collection after collection is not my idea of genius. Oh, that reminds me to CC Tory Burch on this.

So, enter the polygamist wives, who are apparently taking their fashion cues from Ann B. Davis’ character Alice on “The Brady Bunch.” Some of us fashion buzzards are  wondering how influential their look might become, given that “inspiration” in fashion is serendipitous.

Alluding to Mr. Jacobs’ penchant for “homage,” Susan Cernek, the fashion editor of glam.com wrote that the womens’  look “sounds like a good Holloween costume…or Marc Jacobs Spring ’09.”

Well, I’ve got news for Ms. Cernek. John Galliano beat him to the punch(line) in his Dior Spring ’07 collection. It was a collection so dreary, one wonders whether he was way ahead of the rest of us by researching fundamentalist Mormon sects. Maybe, just maybe, I’m wrong about him and the man is a visionary and a psychic!

Read the AP story on cnn.com  which does a good job of explaining some of the sociopolitical aspects of these womens’ appearance and a review I wrote of the Dior exhibit when it appeared at The Chicago History Museum.

TheBestDressedList.com 

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