V for Vivienne
The day before Valentine’s, I got an unexpected call from my fellow PhD here at Cambridge Benedetta inviting me to meet Vivienne Westwood the following day. “Omigod, yes! I’m free on Valentine’s!” “That’s great! I’ll meet you at 6!” “I’ll be there! Vivienne is a designer, right?”
(Now it’s understandable if you, dear reader, would stop right here and switch to another article more worthy of your attention. This is a fashion page, after all. But I ask in the name of Miranda Priestley to give this Andy Sacks a chance.)
After a talking down from Benedetta, who also happens to be a journalist from Milan, she told me that she had backstage passes for London fashion week, and among all her “other” PhD friends (read: awkward, nerdy, unbathed), she thought I was most worthy to pretend that I’m her producer for CNBC Italia. V-day aside, she had me at
We got to the venue and produced our ID tags. I was warned that there would likely be goodie bags, but unfortunately they had none. The burly bouncer simply pointed us to the press entrance and then a Vivienne Westwood PR lady escorted us backstage.
Now I had been backstage in TV productions before, but I had never been to one of a fashion show. And already I could spot two major differences: 1) the clothes, honey, are simply gorgeous, like real pieces of art even limp in their bony hangers — the antithesis to the padded, sparkly gowns I had seen in our variety shows. Heck, security people were even patrolling the rows of clothes racks! And, 2) Unlike those that I was used to in my TV/ad agency days, the buffet table had an (over)abundance of food — from tuna sandwiches to Perrier to Disarono Amaretto liqueur. But it took one emaciated-looking model to remind me though that, oh yeah, starvation is industry practice.
Parallel to the rows and rows of clothing was the row of blindingly bright lightbulbs of the hair-and-makeup section. Save for two or three models getting their final touch-ups, the section saw no action outside from trendy MAC people chatting up each other.
Until she arrived. Benedetta pointed me to this white old lady with flame-red hair entering from the stage door. Vivienne! I did my research beforehand, and I knew that she was famous for punk and that she was a Dame. I didn’t know how those two identities mixed, but now I do. Her outfit was grunge-y and street, with a gold necklace with peace symbols and statement-buttons adorning her top. Fierce, to say the least. She sat on a makeup chair and was instantly hounded by the select press people backstage. Benedetta started panicking when the PR person told her she was next but then her cameraman wasn’t there. So we had to run outside and look for Paolo in the photographer’s pit by the catwalk.
And then the reveal: apparently, they would need someone to reserve the prime spot that Paolo had been sitting on for the past hour while they interviewed Dame Vivienne. A true sport, I took one for the team and did the dirty job that any true producer would do. Of course it helped that I had spotted some cute and bored photographers tinkering with their wares.
In the half-hour I sat there, I managed to chat up this photographer from The Daily Telegraph. He said that Vivienne’s show was supposed to be the highlight of fashion week, as she had not participated in it for almost 10 years. Then this other guy approached me asking what time the show would start, as he couldn’t wait for the after-party. Ahem. When I introduced myself as a graduate student helping out my journalist friends, he immediately excused himself to go check on “his lenses” though.
The waiting wasn’t bad at all, especially when people started coming in. At first, it was the usual high society-ish overdressed lot that came in. But then I spotted this blindingly white girl with spiky hair in this sleek, satin red dress and realized: It’s Kelly Osbourne! Aaahhh! I took out my camera and made my way to her while she went unnoticed by all the other photogs. She spotted me from afar, and when I came near enough she went, “Hi. My friend and I are looking for our seats. Where is B1?” At that moment, I was just thinking, it must be a compliment that she thought I was PR and not press.
This weakness of the British press in recognizing celebrities continued on for the rest of the evening. When Benedetta and Paolo came back, they saw I wasn’t camped out in their spot anymore; I had begun pointing out to the other photographers the rest of the celebrities on-hand. Impressed, Benedetta decided I should be the one to escort Paolo to hound the celebs and get their photos. We managed to get Cuba Gooding, Jr., Kyle McLachlan, and Lily Allen. There were a few other D-listers that I failed to identify. For this, I blame my PhD for taking up the brainspace of my pop culture knowledge.
When security people started glaring at us for getting in tooclose to Kyle (I had just wanted to praise him for Desperate Housewives’ resurgence in Season 4!), it was a sign that our show was about to start. Paolo took his spot by the pit, and Benedetta and I took our second-row seats.
As the lights flashed and the music pumped and the first model came out in prison-orange panties with a protest placard which read, “Fair trial my arse. Justice for the prisoners of
But. Epiphany. As part of the catwalk audience that night, I began to see it was something so much more. The catwalk is narrative: It is the telling and a sharing of a statement about our society, our culture, and even our politics. See the many handcuff accessories that adorned the models. The catwalk is voice: It is the communication of a person who does not “make clothes” but creates art and gives other people shared expressions of their identity, and even facilitates belonging. See Vivienne’s appropriation of counter-culture punk in some models’ half-shaved hair alongside a more traditionally British Miss Marple get-up. The catwalk is signification: It is the mixing of myriad signs and symbols separately meaningless but together profound. Biker hats, military boots, ‘60s silk screen art, and short-short skirts all seem terribly random, but altogether they composed a palette that meant possibly sexy for some, over-the-top for others, or — as I saw it, in more ways than one — in your face. And finally, the catwalk is ritual: it is a high holiday that celebrates the extraordinary of what is ultimately, for each one of us, every day: clothes. On a daily basis, we put them on, we use them, we get used to them, we put them away. Catwalks would be the ceremony when we’re reminded that, yes, they come from somewhere, they are creations, they are ideas, they are identities. Appropriately enough, the evening did end with a play of identity, as the girl who opened the catwalk in her Guantanamo-orange underpants turned out to be a guy, now shirtless for all to see, perhaps released from the prison-house of identity that his clothes initially “chained” him to.
And with that, the night ended. I said goodbye to my friends, who then had to rush off to edit their piece for immediate broadcast. While I had to skip the after-party to take the train back home, I thought Vivienne made an excellent Valentine’s date. Perhaps it’s time to wear those prison-bracelets and punkify my
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E-mail the fish-out-of-water author at jo296@cam.ac.uk.
