The Most Important Question in Life Answered

Oh such meaning of life! I am posting this blog firstly to answer the question that two people asked me on Facebook. What is the purpose of the runway? The second because it’s way too long to post as a FB status and thought it would be fun to post this to end the year 2013 with something frivolous as posting about the purpose of the fashion runway.

It is pretty ridiculous some of those designs that will never make it to the floors of your local Walmart. Recently I watched about 3 minutes of the Victoria’s Secret “Angel” Fashion Show which was sort of a cross between a concert, a PR stunt and porn. Peacocks on stilts really. The girls are beautiful. The designs...eh. Not that special. Mostly because I know for a fact that they were probably hot glued together with feathers. More than that...I wondered how they got rid of the body hair they didn’t have. I don’t really want to know. It sounds too painful.

I was attracted to fashion at 13 years old watching Elsa Klench on Sat mornings before Bugs Bunny came on. I idolized names like Alexander McQueen, Vivian Westwood, Betsy Johnson, Donna Karan, Todd Oldham and Missoni. There was this incredible showing of clothes and you never saw the creator of the masterpieces until the end, and humbly take a bow. I loved the conversations about the fabrics, the details, stitching, quality, tailoring like french cuffs and peplums that swang such a way when the model walked. I took a sewing class in high school and fell in love with the sewing machine. I absorbed my art classes like a dry sponge being dipped into a bucket of water for the first time. Mostly it was an escape from chemistry and math class which I still think I am allergic to because I’ve needed a calculator during a recent game of Adventuretime Monopoly. But I digress.

The answer to the gnawing question: What is the purpose of runway fashion?

It’s basically the salon of fashion. The designers show the most amazing creations, wow the buyers and media and the Saudi Arabian sikhs that can afford to buy a $32,000 camel hair coat. It’s the fashion olympics. Most of the clothes, true never make it to the stores. But think if they DID. It would be like living in a virtual Dr. Seuss land!

For creatives, this is where dreams are made in their sculpting mediums: cloth and a sewing machine. For the fashion industry, it fuels the billions of dollars that interprets the trends in society that get translated into a palatable and functional form of creativity. Clothes that we actually wear. I mean let’s face it...you can’t wear fine art that is hanging in Moma can you? You can’t wear a cleverly coded video game, nor a well constructed film or an abstract sculpture. When people are given, invited or purchase tickets to a runway show they are expected to be wowed. BUT the reality is, even people like Isaac Mizrahi and Kate Spade make the bulk of their buck on QVC and HSN. Not all fashion shows are insane with juggling monkeys. However for the fashion designer, the stores, the media and projectionists (even economic trendoids like INVESTORS) need to basically show the greater public what they are going to “offer” the runway becomes the deadline for high couture (custom ordered) and RTW: ready to wear. Because their career depends on several big time deadlines (like how much fabric to order) for the market “showing” their craft and launchpad is the runway. 

For example, “I am offering this incredible camel hair coat for FALL, if you want it, order it by April 1st or you don’t get it. If you are a size 18 the price might go up since the price of camel hair produced in the himalayas might go from 300 to 900 bucks a yard depending on the status of inter tribal warfare or gas prices to ship it by air to Saudia Arabia.” Plus if it’s couture that means FITTINGS for customized fashion. For RTW orders on how much fabric, trimmings and quanity to produce need to be PROJECTED. For the masses...you have to sit and wait for the media and trend services to basically say,“hot item was a camel hair coat by Lisa Vote” because it made it to the floors of Saks. By the time camel hair coats that Lisa Vote offered in March as the next hot trendy item, it’s been about a year since first sighted on the runway but people are screaming for them in Walmart NOW! They will not pay $32,000 for a couture camel hair coat. They want it for $12.99 on rollback! It trickles down just like economics. Do Walmart store buyers go to runway shows? No, but their CEOs do, their investors do and so do the media moguls. The celebrities that are given (for FREE) that $32K camel hair coat to wear to the Oscars so that we crave camel hair coats subconsciously and start seeing EVERYONE in them are seated FRONT and CENTER at the shows. Plus,the factories in China don’t design camel hair coats, they just manufacture it for LESS so that everyone can have one. The same camel hair coat with $900 a yard fabric that wowed Saks to order 12 to be tailored for their VIP clients will be modified to be mass produced for Walmart with $1.99 100% poly/acrylic, made in China for $2.00 and on the floor for November just in time for black friday!

But this nuts and bolts of the fashion runway economics explained. However, for the fashion designer. It’s when you know you made it. A successful runway show, no matter how wackadoo shows are it’s about what you can do with a piece of fabric and building your brand. After a successful show however, It also comes away with palatable investors (this is why Mr. Moneybags seated front and center and NOT your Aunt Margaret) and actual orders that launch or sustain your BRAND thus your survival as a fashion designer.  If your brand has your name on it, it’s your name out there. There’s a saying that was drummed into us in school and the industry to make us FEAR the results of the runway.

You are only as good as your last collection.

This is what propels designers to create but it also makes you afraid of the aftermath. Your job is on the line. Literally. When I worked in fashion, the most satisfying thing for me was to see my clothes in a store. Even more if I walked down the street and saw someone wearing what I designed. BUT that rarely happened because I worked in lingerie. Okay maybe once I saw a drag queen with a bra I made on Christopher Street...that had a bit of a cringe effect. But I do take credit for “inventing” the garter thong. My boss rewarded me with a trip to Paris/London because we got a huge order from Victoria’s Secret. I still love fashion. Even the ridiculousness of it. The crazier the better. We had another saying at my job in the lingerie industry that alleviated much stress when under deadlines.

It’s only underwear.

So the next time you see those super models swagger down the runway just remember there’s someone behind the clothes that spent countless hours planning, sketching, cutting, sewing, stitching, and promoting that $32,000 camel hair coat the masses will want for $12.99 on rollback in Walmart.

Happy New Year and I hope it’s a fashionable one!!

The Dog Days of Christmas

A bit of a ditty here as if I haven’t written, typed enough in the last two weeks for school however, I feel compelled to write something other than citations of academic journals and reading turn of the century theologians today. Plus, everything is covered in ice, the sky is a dreary gray and I have errands to run but procrastinating because simply put- I have that “now what” feeling after a whole semester of school. Christmas is coming and now I can deck the halls with some holly.

So, despite all the holly jolly of the season I am stating here that we are officially in the dog days of Christmas. Such anticipation hurls many of us into the new year with a big fat let down in January. Cold, frozen and more gray skies, bills come in, resolutions already broken and yet we have longer days and the hope of spring. For years when I lived in New York I loved December because the store windows, lights and atmosphere pumped with exciting anticipation. I tried to avoid going into Macy on a lunch hour however, but couldn’t resist seeing the amazing creative displays in the stores. My inner calendar while working in fashion was set to when new merchandise comes into the stores. This is how my brain still at times reverts. What I’ve noticed about myself in recent years is how my rhythm of life is so integrated to world that I’ve noticed needing constant awareness this is not how God intended my life to be. Christmas without all the anticipation and sparkle is very dreary and Hanukkah without the progression of light is just simply dark and boring but, I have become also aware that the same “blahzay” feeling every year comes over me in December. I think because yet again Christmas gets turned into a culture war quite too often and that we take some things way too seriously and yet on the other hand it feeds our culture of materialism so I often choose not to engage because it’s just “yuck”.

One child, who shall remain nameless here, a couple years ago said to my kids Santa wasn’t real and projected that it was Jesus’s birthday on Dec 25 quite adamantly. I didn’t have the heart to crush his view but thought how it’s okay for point out one aspect of truth with another “suggestive fact” that simply is not true. I also have had kids say to my children God is not real, yet they believe in Santa. See the irony in this? This is why I call it the dog days of Christmas because when religious mistruths get turned into something political or cultural to judge others or take a cultural stand it just turns into pride and division. This is not what God had intended in spreading the GOOD NEWS. 

It’s okay to engage in culture- in fact, God commands it. “Be in the world but not OF the world”. This really does mean to live in the world, engage, celebrate, be jolly, deck the halls but as SpongeBob says, “don’t be a jerk, it’s Christmas time!”. Worship of our Savior was meant to be a lifestyle fully engaged in society yet not fall prey to the deceptions of the world system of this age. As I’ve said in past posts. I let my kids believe in Santa. I don’t see it as I’m lying to them because they come to logical conclusions with "critical thinking" on their own when we drop big sloppy hints that Santa like Vegemite and beer just like their Dad does. I believed in Santa and it “felt” a lot like faith until I saw that Santa had the same handwriting as my Mom. I didn't loose any faith once I had figured out my Dad ate the cookies while Mom stuffed the stockings. I became actually more in tune with my faith. God also is not Santa. I had an imaginary friend that was an elephant, and ask my Mom...that was real to me too. I was 3 years old with an imaginary friend that believed in Santa. I think that's normal for 3 years old.

Christmas can be fun, it’s the anticipation of something good even if it’s just Trader Joe’s egg nog ice cream and it’s also when we can sigh a big relief that longer sunny days are ahead of us in Spring. But as someone who does believe in who Jesus claimed to be, awaiting our Savior's to return is the greatest anticipation we who do believe in who Jesus was can and should have everyday.