September 14, 2007--Fanaticism XC: Wardrobe Malfunction

Fashion Week finally ended. And none too soon. It’s been almost impossible to find an empty table at Balthazar for morning coffee. The things I have to endure.

But the other morning there was something else besides the oat scones to savor. Right there on the front page of the NY Times was a review of the Marc Jacobs show. I can’t resist quoting the delicious opening sentences:

The time was 10:50 p.m. Monday. Victoria Beckham, sheathed in a minidress so tight that her breasts appeared to be up near her chin, entered the Marc Jacobs show, conveyed to her seat by bodyguards and paparazzi.

(See full article linked below, complete with pictures of those upthrusted breasts.)

I read on eagerly hoping it would continue in this vein—one can never get too much gossip before a second cup of coffee. So you can only imagine my disappointment when things turned serious. Of course, I realized, this is the Paper of Record and even trivial things are treated seriously.

Jacobs, we learn, by “pushing himself harder and harder,” through the audacity of his designs, which included “see-through evening trousers and a loose one-shoulder white gown with smudgy print and a sheer panel in back, with a beige bra and panties underneath . . . expressed perfectly the dislocating values of our culture.”

Later, while attempting to deconstruct that, I was happy to be distracted by President Bush who provided something else to ponder—the meaning of “an enduring relationship” with Iraq. Talk about dislocating values. Maybe Bush and Jacobs are on the same wavelength.

I was also reminded of Cousin Moritz who years ago was in the coat business. Or as he would prefer to describe it, the Rag Trade. He was famous for inviting women up to his workshop in the Garment District where, while fitting them with the latest, he would also give them a feel or two. As you might imagine, he did quite well.

Before every family wedding or bar mitzvah my mother and all her sisters would make their way to Moritz on 36th Street. With them, he of course watched his roving hands, or so it was reported. At the catered affairs they looked wonderful in their new coats as one-by-one they made their grand entrances up the regal steps of the Flatbush Jewish Center. Aunt Bertha was always the most distinguished, Aunt Gussie the sexiest, Tanta Tanna alluringly exotic, Aunt Fannie radiant, and my mother was transformed into a glamorous movie star.

Moritz always stood alone in the sidewalk, watching them arrive and swelling with pride as he contemplated what he had brought into their otherwise routine lives. Unlike Marc Jacobs who said, on seeing the former Spice Girl in the front row—“It’s ironic that she was here with her breasts out. This show wipes all that kind of expression away”--Moritz never for a moment thought about the social implications of his designs. I suspect that as he admired his work he was already thinking that next year he would cut velvet.