The Sun-Herald

Frocks and fiascos

I can report that behind the scenes at Fashion Week there was much to point and laugh at.

I can't help it. So much of the deadly-serious fussing and jostling surrounding this annual trade fair - because that's really all it is - seems plain ludicrous.
The only part I struggle to find funny is the behaviour of the crowd that Fash Week attracts.
You think frocks are pretty? Not always. Something about the rag trade just seems to turn people mean.
Rudeness reigns supreme. When one of my colleagues politely asked for a drink at one function at in the official Absolut bar after roaming the place for the best part of half an hour trying to find one, the waiter mimicked him, turned his back and flounced off. I lost count of the times I was shoved, elbowed and prodded by hard-faced women intent on being first to the show, the bathroom, the champagne - hell, even the sausages at the sizzle.
I felt a bit sorry for the models. They're not allowed to be rude. This year a clutch of them spent 10 hours in make-up naked except for little thongs and nipple stickers, being painted all over with black and white spots, stripes and harlequin patterns for the M.A.C. opening party. Thus adorned, they stood for hours on mirrored podiums holding a single pose while around them the rest of us knocked back food and fizz.
I remember locking eyes with one a couple of hours into the evening. Momentarily I saw the desolate gaze of a caged lab animal, before the professional blankness returned.
On Wednesday, a chilly evening, models were dangled from trees over water at the Willow event at the harbourside Carthona House. With no body fat and very little material for cover, they looked as if, one by one, they might topple from their perches. This might have provided welcome light relief to a botched event where guests were assailed by an invasion of no-name, no-use 'socialites' plonking their butts on other people's dinner table seats so relentlessly that even the designer herself - Kit Willow Podgornik - had to oust a usurper from her spot.
The sparring over seating real estate is a perennial feature of Fash Week and is amusing - up to a point. As one of my frock writing colleagues pointed out, the last thing you need when you've been working round the clock to meet deadlines and provide the coverage the organisers expect - and demand - is to have to do battle with glamour-addicted pests who descend like locusts upon the runway shows and hospitality, clogging the place up as they claw for their slice of attention.
I see it at so many parties generally; the people who actually must attend these events for work - such as journalists, caterers, photographers, models and entertainers - wearily trying to get the job done while wading through what I have come to call 'idiot soup.' This city needs a major cull of its fabulous and not-so-fabulous nobodies and to instigate a recognition of talent, wit, humour and humility.
And I'd love to see good manners back in fashion.