September 15, 2013

The sick society of capitalism

Fashionistas  Miroslava Duma (center), Taylor Tomasi Hill (left) and a friend pose for photographs in front of a homeless man outside Moynihan Station following a showing of the Rag & Bone Spring/Summer 2013 collection during New York Fashion Week. (Reuters/Lucas Jackson)






Update (Sept. 19th 2013)

We got a flurry of comment discussion on facebook for this post, partly on our page but mainly in Rabble. One person said "it's the new Derelicte collection," which folks who know their movie trivia will recognize as a reference to Zoolander (featuring Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell, 2001).

In the movie Ferrell's character plays wild fashion designer Mugatu, who introduces the fashion line saying "Let me show you Derelicte. It is a fashion, a way of life inspired by the very homeless, the vagrants, the crack whores that make this wonderful city so unique."

Shocking? While sometimes truth is stranger, or more gross, than fiction.

Mugatu and Derelicte were actually based on a real designer, John Galliano who worked for Dior (until he was fired, and then convicted by a French court, because he made racist and anti-semetic remarks -- like "I love Hitler" -- in Paris bar. But Dior had no problem with Galliano's "Haute Homeless" described in the New York Times (Jan. 23, 2000) as follows:

Dior models who starve themselves posed as the starving. They came down the runway raggedy and baggy, some swathed in newspapers, with torn linings and inside-out labels, accessorized with empty little green J&B whiskey bottles, tin cups dangling from the derriere, bottle caps, plastic clothespins and safety pins. Some posed as lunatic ballerinas in frayed tulle, others in straitjackets and white madhouse makeup. The fashion designer said he was inspired by the French homeless as well as the mentally ill... (Galliano said) ''Some of these people are like impresarios, their coats worn over their shoulders and their hats worn at a certain angle. It's fantastic.''
Carrie Bradshaw, aka Sarah Jessica Parker's character in Sex And The City, wore of the Dior newspaper dresses in the series and the movie.


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