I imagine the models backstage getting in and out of the costumes that these "designers" have at the ready...

"Ah shit. Fuckin antlers...Where's my heroin?"

Leave them alone. If you make them leave the fashion business, they will think up other ways to annoy us.

been in and around the fashion indisutry for 40 years.

your analysis is spot on.

I would think they'll be getting a letter from Disney's lawyers fairly soon.

I served time at a fashion magazine too. A couple of points I'd like to add: Magazines have a long lead-time--October gets put to bed in April. By October you're putting April to bed and already looking at trends for the next fall. So by the time everybody wears the boots you told them were the latest thing, you already know they're past tense and there's a new latest. You can't wear the boots yourself even if you like them, because you'll be perceived as uncool, and in such things promotion lies. Our editor for trends was as far ahead of the rest of us as we (supposedly) were of our readers. I often wondered if to the untrained eye she looked dowdy.

Second point: when I look at mastheads today, I see a lot of the same last names--sons and daughters are now high up in the hierarchy. Politics isn't the only field with dynasties.

Shocking the middle class is so... middle class.

I think they should re-enact a seal clubbing. They can bring in some serious Newfies with clubs to do the honors.

Good job. Funny and deadly accurate. I'm a fashionista's nightmare (stingy, dowdy New England matron) but my roommates in my youth were in advertising and publishing in the city, and you capture it perfectly.
The book about the Stones was cool, but I wish you would write a book about American pop culture now. An updated Fear and Loathing, perhaps?

Often Vanderleun seems quite compelled to vent hostile stuff against gays. I generally enjoy his wit, but would like to see far less of the gratuitous bashing. Of course the "fashions" depicted above are over the top and absurd, but they also strike me as glaringly and pleasingly ANTI PC. Not only do I see tons and tons of fur, but the theme of freezing runs completely counter to the PC monotony of Global Warming(TM)... You all seem too determined to spout non-sequitur blather to notice... Rather than bashing the brilliant Lagerfeld I would have thought he might be hailed, at least for his irreverent takedown of insane PC Shibboleths on the runway...? Instead we see gratuitous swipes and a dimwitted misreading of the imagery followed by more piling on in the comments... too bad.

What you said about fashion designers - I was re-reading 'Populuxe', and the author was writing about car designs, and how the designs changed so much year-to-year from the mid 1950's to the mid 1960's. The designers hated that - they had been used to incremental design changes. They would alter the size and shape of a back window over the years of a design's life (for example), but they suddenly had to change much of everything each year, and each year come up with something new. As soon as they were done they had to drop it and work on something else, with months - not a base and then a few years to come up with the next design - but months.

No wonder fashion designers come up with a do-not-wear-in-Michigan hat, or dirigible skirts. Or Lothar-of-the-Hill-People wear. Long skirt or short skirt; long sleeved blouse or short sleeved blouse; neckline low or high.

I am just surprised that the Roman Legion hasn't shown up as an inspiration (though I doubt these waifs could wear, let alone heft, a gladius).

Fashion: Proof that malnutrition, buggery, and drugs do weird things to a person's brain.