At the unfashionably early hour of 9 a.m. on the first day of Fashion Week, among rail-thin women in bondage pumps at the brand-new Lincoln Center location, I ran into Robbie Myers, Elle‘s editor in chief. She was in very high heels and a snug little black dress for Fashion Next, the magazine’s new awards event for student designers.
“Wow, you look so thin,” I told her.
“That’s always a wonderful thing to say,” she replied.
I guess so. But should I have said, “Happy New Year,” too?
Fashion Week often brushes against the Jewish high holidays. But this year it coincides with them almost to the day, forcing comparisons that may seem inappropriate or even blasphemous. Well, whether it’s Ralph, Calvin and Donna, or Abraham, Isaac and, um, Jacobs, the people of the book have always been into the cloth.
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And so we have a religious holiday that’s all about taking stock for people who depend on moving the merchandise, a time for turning to higher thoughts for a creative industry that’s all about the bottom line, the Jewish Day of Judgment, shoved right up against a week when everyone is on fire judging everyone and everything in sight.
At the Project Runway show I attended at 10 a.m., before many of the week’s veteran opinionators and determinators were around, countless young bloggers flocked into the big tent, tapping keyboards and hitting “send” like so many birds in tree branches. In the front row, meanwhile (with a camera flying over the audience like some kind of mini-god in a helicopter), Jessica Simpson wrote extensive notes as a guest judge.
“She’s really taking her job seriously,” a colleague muttered to me.
Of course she was. Because if you don’t take fashion seriously, then what are you left with but some cynicism and a closet full of last season’s mistakes? Like religion, fashion takes faith. High-end retailers have to have faith in an age of H&M, Top Shop and Gilt.com. Investors have to have faith in designers who are as sure about what they should be doing as Moses in the wilderness. Print critics have to have faith that what they publish will matter when bloggers and even designers are streaming shows and commentary on the spot. And customers have to have faith that the diaphanous dress spun with spit by the latest design darling won’t fall apart five minutes into a party.
Outside the Project Runway show, which I judged as too long, I stood in the new lounge area of the fashion tents (which Cathy Horyn of The Times judged as causing “a real sense of displacement,” whatever that means). I told Miles Ladin, a WWD photographer, that I was off to temple. He looked me up and down, taking in my plaid Jack Spade jacket, H&M jeans, Prada loafers and Louis Vuitton messenger bag.
“You’re not going home to change first?” he asked.
“Save your judgments for the designers,” I told him.
The free Rosh Hashanah service at Town Hall, organized by Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the gay synagogue, was packed with men and women in business attire. I felt underdressed. But as the rabbi spoke about creation and awe, I started to take stock of the sins for which I’d be atoning on Yom Kippur. I gossip, mock and resent. I judge people by their shoes. I dress inappropriately and am always late. I know I’m supposed to have remorse for these and the other things I do as a flawed and judgmental New Yorker. But where would I be, where would any of us be, without our flaws? Ohio?
I have no answer. But for a moment at that service, as the Shofar sounded its trumpet call to conscience, nothing mattered, not even Fashion Week or my jeans.
L’Shana Tovah. Happy New Year. And for the record, you all look thin.
editorial@observer.com
