Looky-Loo LA
I love fashion as much as anybody, especially in these financially dire times that make the looky-loo escapism of haute couture more attractive than it already is. But denial has its limits. When the Times debuted a new Sunday magazine a couple of weeks ago, a thick glossy that had already proudly announced it would bear little resemblance to the story-oriented magazines of eras past, I passed up the front page and went straight to it. I had a rationale: the headline news was getting so discouraging, I needed to cleanse my palate with mindless fare before facing those headlines again. It was like having a couple of drinks before dinner, and not a good dinner, but one with peas and liver and things you don’t like but that you know you have to eat because they’re necessary and make you a better and more conscious person. I always want to be better and more conscious, but sometimes I need a moment of complete self-indulgence to get there. This was one of those moments.
So I sat down with my drink. I thumbed through the pages of L.A. (the title of the new magazine) expectantly. It was mostly fashion, with spreads that were aggressively conceptual, meaning the models wore outfits nobody in the real world would ever wear, or even in the unreal world of Hollywood. That didn’t surprise me. I could see the magazine was pushing L.A.—the city—as a landscape of endless fantasy that could accommodate all these bizarre outfits, and more. The outfits were just the tip of the iceberg of possibility. It was a sell, of course, one that I could see coming from a mile off, but it made me feel strangely hopeful. Examining the tulle and torn jeans and ball gowns, the miseries of the front page held firmly at bay, I felt a shot of optimism. I felt a little dreamy, floaty. Maybe, just maybe...
Even as I wanted to fall, I was yanked upright. I stopped on a photo of a woman clad in cotton jeans, walking along the beach. Nothing outré about that except for her accessory: a huge, luxe, coppery fur vest that was ridiculously out of place and, more to the point, ridiculously expensive--$22,000, to be exact. Twenty-two thousand dollars, in this economy? Big magazines like Vogue and Elle hardly went there, even in boom times, and here was this upstart insisting that L.A. was some kind of island, exempt from humility. I felt no longer transported, but insulted; this was too much in ways that were too numerous to count. In its determination to ignore current events, fashion had instantly overreached and exposed itself as desperate and out of touch. It was the bad news, dressed up in tinsel that made that news more ominous than it would have otherwise been. Fashion may be a great distraction, but it’s become a terrible politician. Chastised, I went back to page one and willed myself to read the headlines. As I expected, it was no fun, but it was certainly a good thing. A healthy thing.
Photo credit: Francois Guillot; AFP/Getty Images