Vice Style

We're always being told that we should be more like the rest of the fashion industry and stop being so into sportswear and music and get with the man bag program. If we were reviewing Milan fashion week, the city where most of the big high fashion menswear business is done, that would probably be apt, but the labels that show in Paris aren't really about shifting suits, even if sometimes they pretend they are. No one cared about Givenchy until they started making what is essentially streetwear. No one gives a damn about Dior now that it's not sold off the backs of new musicians. Mugler's big because of Nicola Formichetti's marketing genius, not because the suits are a recognized phenomenon, and Raf ceased to be important around about the same time the blazers took prominence over the teenage sci-fi fantasies. Maybe Kim Jones' Louis Vuitton proves this theory wrong, maybe not, but anyone who knows anything about Kim, knows he loves thugs and sportswear. So forgive us for worrying about the sort of shows that make fashion fun and not droning on about tailoring.

To that end, we had fashion writer Dan Thawley review the more exciting shows for us.

Fashion week works for the press on at least two levels: There are the big shows, guarded by ferocious PRs who pretend they have never heard of the magazine you work for—"Vice? What’s that?"—which makes you feel kind of sorry for them until you realize they’re lying, and the smaller ones, which are of course, easier to get into and attract the bloggers, friends of friends of friends of the designers, Japanese kids, the usual bunch of fashion people dressed in black, people who must be important because their clothes ooze money, and the PRs treat them as if they were royalty, while the fashion show photographers yell when they’re tired of waiting and fight to get the best spot. Word has it that they form teams, so that one of them can be there really early and that they pay people the security people to get in the buildings at night in order to mark their spot on the ground.