Anna Wintour, André Leon Talley, and his coat at Carolina HerreraPhoto: Getty Images
Evidently, ‘tis the season to soldier along with the unwashed masses.
First Lulu Guinness slummed it waiting for seat assignments at Matthew Williamson Sunday night, and then this morning before the Carolina Herrera show, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien chatted merrily with a reporter about the size of runway models while she waited her turn at registration. Less patient was The Young and the Restless’ Victoria Rowell, who jumped the queue in order to gain entrance on her own recognizance; all that hurrying was for naught, though, as she then spent the entire run-up to the show standing aimlessly in the aisles waiting to see if she could snag an unclaimed spot. Soledad, meanwhile, was rewarded with a prime front-row view. It’s good to see karma in action.
Also in the house’s best seats: Kim Cattrall, who on Friday modeled a beautifully draped one-shoulder Herrera gown in the Heart Truth Red Dress Collection. She was beaming in a lacy, canary tweed suit that seemed rather more Nanette Lepore than Herrera, but which echoed her current trend of looking refreshingly and beautifully her own age. Here’s hoping she’s stopped writing books about orgasms, as we no longer care to learn any more about the likes and dislikes of her vagina.
But the celebrity turnout was still quite limited, lending credence to our suspicion that most celebrities are either too cold or too hung-over to attend much of anything just yet; even someone with the red-carpet cachet of Carolina Herrera drew a predominantly socialite crowd. Those bitches are taking back the night. (Assuming they ever had it in the first place.) Ivanka Trump, Kelly Bensimon, designer Tory Burch, and Olivia Chantecaille represented the socialite contingent, the latter looking pretty but as painfully, worryingly thin as many of the catwalk models still do. It’s cold out, Olivia; go eat a burger. Seriously, it’ll make you feel better.
We’re always thrilled to see the imposing figure of Vogue’s André Leon Talley gliding through the tents, approximately twenty feet taller than anyone else and almost always swaddled in some sort of divine coat. But today, he took our breath away — in a blocked-trachea, light-headed, “Alexis Carrington Colby Dexter Rowan is choking me out by the lily pond” kind of way — when he loped into the Carolina Herrera show encased in a black, gold-trimmed coat emblazoned with tacky glittering letters on the back that read, “The New American Dream.” Yes, that’s right: André Leon Talley was wearing Baby Phat. And a piece ripped straight from Friday’s runway show, to boot, as if it were some sort of Law & Order: Fashion Crimes episode. We can’t fathom why Anna Wintour, perched next to him, didn’t smack him on the head with the bottle of Herrera perfume left on her seat; perhaps her dark glasses obscured the psychedelic oddity of his choice. Or maybe she was asleep.
We wonder if this is actually the first recorded incident of Baby Phat clothing being exposed to the more sophisticated fur-trimmed glamour of Carolina Herrera. We hope the coat felt bad about itself after the show and skulked off to the corner to think about its transgressions. —The Fug Girls
Watch video of the Carolina Herrera show.
Watch a slideshow of the Carolina Herrera show.
Read Andre Leon Talley’s Fashion Week picks.
