It’s not in the runways that they will prosper, but in the oeuvres of cache Hollywood actors, dignified socialites and haughty magazine editors where the real mettle of their ambitions that will hopefully translate their creative flair, unique vision and giddy sensibilities to voluminous sales and the ongoing exposure required to keep their Havana open and their particular oasis the translucent odometer of what is acceptable, desirable and hopefully also non soluble.
“Espresso?” you think “no, let’s make that a martini.”
The role of designer has become a burdened one, to create a sense of style that isn’t too appropriated, too austere, or gaudy, palatable to the department store arbiters. To create a shoe, a dress, a swivel, a loopy tassel that will capture the imagination of a discerning consumer, to help them retain, re-create the appropriate Saturday night savor faire. To anticipate, to steer the trends, to extend, to re loop those tassels, the signature pouts, the playful and yet serious homage to what is acceptable and sometimes not acceptable. To bring whim, fancy, contrived dispositions, measurements to elegant presuppositions. To create a brand which we can all call a favorable resort.
Which rock band to be seen with, which producer, socialite to court, department store to retort. It’s a journey with an insurmountable pay-off, and all it takes is the integrity of being, creation and sometimes the pot luck that everything comes together and all the tassels in your brain are the ones the customers are wearing in the autumn rain.
What of the fashionistas? They too have arrived. Of course they have always been around in gaudy bars, clutching olive laden martinis, lobsided haircuts, droll ‘Andy Warhol” like expressions of “:Duh and wo-w-w” loitering in the beauty departments, spraying the latest parfum de jour on their super deodirized exfoliated skin. Always been around but with the camera rolling and the magazine editors launching they suddenly have something more to say, another product to sell, another lamp shade to prop, a new place to shop, and a new name to drop.
Negotiating their own web sites, styling thoughts, accessories, permutations on olives and parfum trollops, the fashionista has become a derivative of an industry they once served to accompany and glorify. Intent on becoming their own stars (and why not?) they have launched reality shows, been seen moving closer to the front row of fashion shows and flouting if improbable ‘uber’ repose. They no longer just manage the pose, they have become part of the pose.
It’s all a mercurial delight, one that SCV hopes the reader, the perpetrator and the vilified don’t take too seriously. A stage performance which hopefully commands the audiences attention, their fears and aspirations and the chance to let oncoming autumn levity bring upon it a surreal brevity and wondrous reverie.
As the stage lights turn to set, and the actors and set directors take to repose I am reminded of what the dandy Ike Ude of ‘Arude’ fame and other celestial delights has often held; “….one can always find a place to shop, a pose to adopt, but ultimately one is obliged to adhere to the internal sensibility of vitriol and near abandon.”
This was impossible to read. This is horrible writing.