After A Month Of Fashion Weeks: We Must Adore The Madness

The Fabulous Louise Gray AW12

Many mentalists end up in asylums, others manage to slip through the bars, escape and become fashion designers, which is the real reason why the majority of people in the fashion industry are skeletal.

This does not, however, mean the fashion industry deserves the bad rep it has been permanently tarnished with and in the wake of London Fashion Week I think it’s time we all made friends with what is assumed to be a ‘travelling freak show’ of twats who pass out at the sight of a shoe.

First and foremost, any multi-billion pound industry inspired by lunatics who survive off caffeine and class A’s deserves to be heartily celebrated: they’re running financial circles around every economist in Europe. They must be doing something right. I struggle to even open an email after a heavy night: John Galliano was pissed and high for two decades yet still wowed the most influential players in one of the largest industries in the world whilst helping to define possibly the most fantastically tacky sartorial era so far, even if he did end up outing himself as a racist Nazi and falling from grace in a cloud of coke and pinstripes and feathers…

I can understand how from the outside it all seems horribly pretentious and bizarre but even Queen Vivienne herself doesn’t really expect you to wear head to toe PVC just because the ‘next big thing’ new designer chose to send twelve doped up models down a runway looking like extras from a Britney video circa 1999. Besides, if that is a look you fancy rocking then you can buy far cheaper alternatives from a range of X-rated sites which will gladly infest your C drive with a plethora of viruses and, should you spend over £25 on an entirely wipe clean two piece, will throw in an appreciative tube of courtesy lube too, which is always a nice gesture (it baffles me why Sainsbury’s haven’t tried this tactic yet – what the fuck are nectar points..?)

I can see that the eye watering price points of high end fashion don’t do much to help the cause. When you see a dress that costs more than a deposit of a two bed semi sashaying down the catwalk hanging off a starved Russian sixteen year old it can be hard to see where the credibility is hiding under all that fabric, but in much in the same way that I can enjoy watching films without bursting a blood vessel in outrage over the how far-fetched it is that Tom Cruise can still run like a Duracell bunny and Harrison Ford can still move (at all) I’m able to take it with a hefty pinch of salt and happily indulge in the fantasy.

Jamie Oliver When He Was A Hot Young Piece

Of course there will always be unsavoury aspects to an industry which revolves around the way we look, but judging each other is a human condition which cannot be cured simply by choosing the most dull-as-arse shoes possible in the M&S sale. Look at Kate Middleton: she’s worked her dull duchess derriere off to ensure she’s dressed as inoffensively as possible, and is now worshipped by every bland-as-soup woman in the country, taking pride of place next to Jamie Oliver at the altar of annoying British people whom such plebs idolise because they think ‘they must be just like me and you’. They’re not like us. In fact I have no doubt Jamie bathes in his own branded elderflower presse and uses fifty quid casserole dishes embossed with his logo as makeshift bedpans to take midnight shits in just because he’s Jamie Fucking Oliver and is far too tired from being a superhero who rescues kids from dodgy school burgers to bother walking to the toilet at night.

Well, the high priestesses of the fashion world are not like us civilians either. Indeed, those who choose to indulge will have no reservations about spending hundreds, thousands even on a mammoth ball of fur to place on their head like a feral cat escaping a flood, but to steal a phrase from the fash-pack themselves; isn’t it all just bloody fabulous?

Normal life can be balls. We trudge around trying not to dress too slutty for the office and avoiding wearing anything bright enough to get us mistaken as extras from 80’s musicals on the tube, but perhaps if more people embraced the absolute lunacy of high fashion, even just a tad, then the world would be nothing but a brighter, more entertaining place.