September, 1998

Women's clothing designers hate women. There can be no other possible reason for what I see on the fashion pages of the papers and what's breathlessly reported from the runways in Paris. The clothes are awful. They make women look like they dressed in the alleys on the way to the shoot. It's as though designers were testing the limit of what women can be made to wear without bursting into either laughter or tears.

And that's to say nothing of the furious looks staring us down from the pages of fashion magazines. One slit-eyed, murderous looking model after the next glares out into the mid-horizon or nails the reader dead-center. Where does all that come from, all that fashionable angst?

It makes me sad, 'cause I like women particularly well and there was a time when even a man, leafing idly through Vogue or Elle in the dentist's waiting room would find his anxiety relieved by the well dressed and smiling models. They looked good, damned good and I always sorta thought that women were interested in the latest fashion so that they could feel great about how they looked.

Shows how much a mere man knows. That's obviously not the point in this in-your-face fashion culture. Then what is the point, if women don't buy that stuff? The women I know just laugh and leaf through the fashion magazines like men look at Playboy. They know they're not willing or able to look like that either dressed or undressed, it's gotten to be just a huge giggle.

So who pays the bills and why? If women aren't buying this stuff, how do the fashion houses get away with it and why do they bother? Well, it's an unenlightened ordinary man's opinion, but I think they do it for name recognition and nothing else. Outrageousness to support a brand. Not unlike what Madonna once was into. Anything to be recognized, because the real money is in belts and handbags and perfume, all those accessory soaps and polishes and blends and smears that require an outrageous name to bring in $40 an ounce.

Name recognition also sells perfectly conservative "designer" suits to both men and women for huge numbers. Not the stuff they parade in Paris---no one buys that. But how're you going to sell a well made $300 men's suit for $1,400 if you don't have a powerhouse label on the inside pocket? When a guy slides back his jacket to grab his platinum card, he doesn't want to flash a label by Joe's Discount Suitery. That's not the way it's done in New York and Bombay and increasingly in Dubuque.

There's an interesting move away from department stores and women's boutiques to catalog sales for clothing. Lots of the best dressed women I know are doing their buying this way. They don't have time to shop anymore and they're weary of clothes on racks in stores. A dress on a hanger is no longer unique. And there's no way to know how it'll look without struggling into and out of all your clothes, once a changing room eventually becomes available. Hard to find time for that these days and to choose from something the store-buyer selected eight months ago in the hope she could dump it all to middle market buyers. You're not a middle market buyer and hate to be made to feel like one.

The catalogs give an appearance of sophistication, everything looking slightly more exclusive. And it's easy to see yourself in these clothes, the model wearing them well and smiling instead of glaring. All this while your feet are up and a glass of wine hovers at your fingertips. If the selection arrives and you don't like it, catalog dealers are masters at return policies.

I don't care much about fashion, but I care heaps about women. It's made me feel even better about them to isolate and understand in my own mind just what the heck is going on in the fashion capitols of the world. No wonder Jackie's handwritten notes to her hat designer survived for the auction block. She was no doubt terrified of what she would be made to look like.

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