It’s a blond thing.
And I certainly don’t understand.
There’s an ugly little trend that swept the runways in New York, Milan and Paris this spring: a spectacularly singular, amazingly retrograde vision of beauty.
One that is very, very young, very, very pale, very, very thin . . .
And very, very blond.
Indeed, women of any color, from Caucasian brunettes to Asians to Latinas to African-Americans, were virtually a no-show at the fall 1996 ready-to-wear collections, which began in Milan in late February and concluded in New York last week.
Supermodels, known for their over-the-top, highly individual beauty, were banished from most runways. In their place strutted an army of anti-model clones: scrawny, anemic- and depressed-looking, devoid of ethnicity.
Fashion insiders call the fall runway shows the “blond collections.”
I call it denial.
Now, I don’t have anything against blonds. And I don’t have anything against designers who rely on a muse to express their view of how a woman should look.
But I can’t help wondering what message some designers are trying to send when they exclude most of the human race from their runways.
Let’s face it: Fashion is, above all, a commercial enterprise. And the last time I checked out the mall, it wasn’t just pale-skinned blonds handing over credit cards at the cash registers.
Like it or not, this is an ethnically diverse nation. People want to see themselves–OK, highly idealized visions of themselves–reflected in the pages of Vogue, Bazaar and Elle. Still, while checking out this month’s Vogue and Bazaar, I can’t help but wonder: Where’s the color?
Fashion is fickle. Change is its only constant. Fashion folks are enamored of that which is, in fashion parlance, of the moment. In this constant quest to be au courant, like children, they often do things without thinking.
The new anti-model isn’t about racism, they say. It’s about fashion.
Don’t believe it?
One well-known male designer shrugged off the runway whiteout, explaining to a reporter (not me!) that “dusky skin just doesn’t seem right this season.”
Which poses an interesting dilemma for those of us out there who do possess “dusky” skin–it’s not as if we can try on and discard skin color as easily as Linda Evangelista changes her dye jobs.
Are we supposed to sit this season out?
And if dark skin–or hair, for that matter–isn’t happening this season, just what are the fashionazis trying to tell us?
That they’ll be horribly offended if we wear their clothes? Somehow, I don’t think so. . . .
