恶人谷

Citizen Models
John Galliano Gives Runway Expectations An Extreme Makeover

By Robin Givhan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 11, 2005; C01



PARIS

At John Galliano's spring runway show over the weekend, it was difficult to gauge whether the audience responded most raucously to the fat lady in the black strapless gown with the mountain of ruffles barely containing the deep valley of her cleavage, or the midget in the pale pink jacket with the bows jutting out from her child-size shoulders, or the old woman in the gray blazer with her fedora pimped to the side.

The Saturday night show was set against a backdrop that called to mind the confluence of a carnival sideshow and a burlesque theater. There was a Thumbelina-size woman in jeans and a nearly transparent blouse and a gentleman in yard-long, auburn dreadlocks who looked like a Rastafarian Rumpelstiltskin. Redheaded twin girls wore complementary gold party dresses. The models, as always, were chosen for their unusual physical attributes. But instead of selecting only aberrantly tall young women who weigh 110 pounds, there were beanpole men, tiny old folks, models with jet-black skin and others almost as pale as an albino. The extremes of humanity were drawn together in a celebration of diversity. It was fashion taking on some of its worse biases: fat, old and ugly.

And it was uncomfortable.

The audience laughed. One woman in the audience jerked fitfully back and forth, she was so overwhelmed with amusement. Some people pointed and howled in hysterics. Others applauded appreciatively, offering the models encouragement for stepping into the spotlight -- a daunting task even for those who do it five or six times a day.

A single-page handout left on each seat underscored Galliano's intention, printed with the lyrics to a song familiar to anyone who'd ever been to Sunday school: "Jesus loves the little children / All the children of the world. / Red and yellow, black and white, / They are precious in His sight. / Jesus loves the little children of the world."

Galliano's array of characters were dressed in clothes that merely hint at his spring collection, a sort of come-on ploy the designer has used before: the denim, the jackets with their sheer scrims of black, and the bias-cut gowns that hugged the derriere and then splashed to the floor in a curtain of chiffon. Some of this will be included in the frocks that await retailers in the showroom. One hopes that his references to tangos, his washed-out charcoal jackets and trousers, and his "Galliano Gazette" newspaper prints were not simply for spectacle. They can form the foundation of a fine spring collection.

The human-specimen display on the runway, meanwhile, was unnerving. The audience was invited to stare. (And mother always said that was impolite.) Were people applauding because the culture believes it takes an exceptional amount of nerve for a fat person to model an evening gown and not collapse in tearful embarrassment over the fact of her fleshy arms? (Cheer for the fat girl!) Whose sensitivities are really being appeased?

This admonishment was embroidered across Galliano's multicolored coats, and scrawled across the thin strip of chiffon that served as the show's invitation: "Don't cry for me, fashionista!" Inherent in that proclamation seems to be the accusation that the fashion industry -- with all of its self-important pronouncements about style and beauty -- need not pity those who don't fit its arbitrary definitions. The models on Galliano's runway swaggered with pride and confidence.

The laughter at Galliano's show was complicated. Was the woman in the gray blazer and trousers funny simply because she was old -- and old people aren't considered beautiful, let alone worthy of walking down a fashion runway? Or the obese woman in the black strapless gown, accompanied down the runway by a muscular man in white leggings -- what did the audience find so funny? Was it the man's exaggerated stage makeup? Or was it the woman's size?

Galliano used fashion as a tool for provocation. No matter if people laughed, knitted their brows in confusion or shifted uncomfortably in their seats, there was no wrong way to respond. The question left to ponder, however, is whether there will ever be a right way.

the whole fashion industry is complete nonesense