THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 28, 1994 TAG: 9412280071
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CAMMY SESSA, Special to The Daily Break
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines
YOU WERE brave to take on the rag trade in ``Pret-a-Porter'' or, for those of us who shop the discount stores, ``Ready to Wear.'' For your efforts, wouldn't you think every fashion designer would kneel and kiss your ring? Instead, they are giving you the raspberries.
Don't worry. If the fashion people know so much, why did they give us see-through blouses, buttocks-baring skirts and platform shoes?
It's too late now but you should have come to me for advice. You had your chance. We both attended the same party at the New York Public Library in November 1993, given by the Council of Fashion Designers.
Everyone who is anyone in American fashion was there, and I have to confess that your presence was the topic of conversation. The feeling was that your movie would do for fashion what ``Jurassic Park'' did for the dinosaur.
Models with movie ambitions, young designers with visions of being catapulted to fame, and journalists hoping to write your screenplay gathered around, probably telling you how wonderful you are.
Wonderful is a powerful word in the fashion trade, especially after each designer's show. The same people who were gathered around you that night are often gathered around designers repeating the mantra: ``wonderful, wonderful.''
Sometimes, if journalists write the truth and don't use ``wonderful,'' they are put on a kind of black list. For instance, I once wrote that Donna Karan's DKNY collection was no better than sportswear found in a ``Land's End'' catalog. Since that time, I haven't been invited to another Karan showing.
Besides wonderful, the fashion people probably told you how ``important'' your movies are. Fashion writers couldn't exist without that word either. Tune in to Elsa Klensch's ``Style'' on CNN and just count the times she uses it. When Klensch interviews designers, she'll goad them on with questions such as: ``What colors are important this year?'' ``Is length important?'' ``How important are four-inch heels?
Many of my friends think I'm important because I cover the American designer collections in New York, Dallas and sometimes, Los Angeles. Recently one of them said: ``What an exciting and glamorous life you have.''
That's a crock.
Being a fashion writer is physically exhausting and humbling.
Humbling because some designers are arrogant egoists. Several years ago, I went backstage after a Karl Lagerfeld show. He was kissing his friends as well as journalists. Well, he wasn't exactly kissing them but kissing the air on both sides of their cheeks. In the fashion world, that's called, ``kissy-kissy.''
He didn't kissy-kissy me, however. With his graying ponytail pulled tightly on his nape, I noticed his frown. He pouted, stamped one of the heels on what I thought were elevator shoes and looked me straight in the eye because he's just about up to my 5-foot-2 frame. He told me flat out he would not grant an interview.
I'll tell you, that's humbling.
Let me say here and now that not all designers are like Lagerfeld. Some are gracious and good-natured, and my favorites over the years have been Adrienne Vittadini; Oscar de le Renta; Linda Allard, who designs for Ellen Tracy; Betsy Johnson; Bill Blass; Ralph Lauren; Alexander Julian; Mary MacFadden; and the late Perry Ellis. Hands down, of all the American designers, Pauline Trigere is the very best.
No matter how good or nice they are, however, getting to and from designer collections is a horror.
Shows begin at 8 a.m. and continue throughout the day.
Once my schedule meant that I had to be out of my New York hotel by 7, grab something to eat from a sidewalk vendor and try to flag down a taxi - an impossibility if it rained, snowed or the temperature hit 20 degrees or below.
The fashion show site was either a hotel ballroom or a small Seventh Avenue showroom. I'd have to squeeze through the maze of buyers, reporters, friends-of-the-designer and fashion show crashers and try to find my designated seat - usually in the very back. Then I'd have to search through the crowd for my photographer.
After each show, the photographer and I had to shove our way out through the crush so we could get to the street to hail another taxi and rush to the next fashion show. Often, running from one fashion event to another about eight to 10 times a day went on well past midnight.
Definitely not glamorous.
Then there's always the possibility a fashion writer won't get a prime invitation. Not getting invited to a showing is as mortifying as not being asked to your high school prom. It happens sometimes because those working for fashion companies (not exactly Mensa candidates) consider cities outside The Big Apple, the boonies. Once, when I called a designer's office, the woman answering asked the location of my newspaper. I told her and she replied:
``Virginia? Is that near Detroit?''
Your town and not a newspaper's circulation often determines your ``place'' at the fashion showings. For the past two years, the Council of Fashion Designers has consolidated the showings at Bryant Park, where they construct two enormous tents behind the New York Public Library. ``Pecking order'' determines your seat. As a rule, my seat is in row ``G.''
The first row, ``A'' - nearest the runway - is reserved for the ``important'' press from big publications such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and The New York Times. I wouldn't say the women who work for these papers are snooty, but when trying to engage any of them in conversation, I know exactly how the peasants felt in the presence of the czar.
Not so patronizing are the celebrities such as Barbara Walters, Ivana Trump, Richard Gere and Johnny Depp. My biggest thrill was sitting across the runway from Jessye Norman, the Metropolitan Opera diva.
That gives me an idea. Maybe the next time, you want to chronicle the fashion industry, consider writing a libretto to an opera with the title ``Haute Couture.'' Whatever you do, Mr. Altman, don't call it wonderful.
With love and a big kissy-kissy,
Cammy Sessa by CNB