MOST PEOPLE, when they hear the word “Arizona,” think about golf carts and spa facials, or Alice Cooper, or horrible sweat lodges gone awry, or extremely tall sports personalities living in potentate splendor in their Sun Valley palazzos. Not me. When I visit Phoenix, I always think about Psycho.
The images of Janet Leigh embezzling from her boss and then fleeing into the sticks, only to be hacked to death in the bathroom of a run-down motel by a troubled young man who wears his mum’s old frocks because he believes that “a boy’s best friend is his mother,” were seared into my brain in the sixties and have remained there ever since. When I fly over downtown Phoenix, I try to identify the famous building from the opening scene. Yes, I’m talking about the location of Janet Leigh’s clandestine lunchtime shag. Was it that building there?
Fall 2009. The plane is coming in to land at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and, yes, I am thinking about Janet Leigh in her pointy white brassiere, but I am also thinking about the Olsens. One half of them is on the plane with me. Mary-Kate and I are flying in to present a trunk show and défilé at Barneys Scottsdale. Ashley arrived a couple of days earlier for a little poolside R & R, and is now hiding under a parasol, one assumes.
Let’s talk about the mind-blowing success of the Row. Mary-Kate and Ashley Oslen are the only entertainment celebrities in the history of fashion to have achieved a Carine-Roitfeld-thinks-we’re-fabulous high-fashion cred. They even won the CFDA Designer of the Year Award. No other celebrity has accomplished this feat. Madge and Gwen may have made some dough in the tweenie zone, Jessica Simpson may have cha-ching’d at Macy’s, but the Olsens are the only People mag iconettes to see their clothing hang in stores alongside Lanvin, Dries Van Noten, Comme des Garçons and Alaia. They have achieved acceptance.
Their designs are uncompromising. Called the Row in homage to Brit tailoring epicenter Savile Row, their collection is chic, elegant, cerebral, modern and pared down. And expensive. In 2011 they launched a handbag line that included a $39,000 croc backpack. Barneys sold three of them.
The former Full House stars and I are staging this fashion show for the delectation of an organization named the Wives of the Phoenix Suns. The event will raise some money for their foundation while simultaneously introducing the basketball wives to a label of which they may have hitherto been unaware.
While Mary-Kate joins Ashley in the Barneys alteration shop for last-minute fittings on their models, I twirl round the store making sure everything looks spiffy.
At six o’clock the twins are ready, and I am all poofy and perfumed and gussied up and ready to meet the basketball wives.
By the way, when I say perfumed, I mean perfumed!
I am a big believer in sloshing it on. Yes, I know that’s very trashy and parvenu and seventies of me, but I enjoy being trashy and parvenu and seventies. When people complain about headaches and allergies caused by the overfragrancing of others, I just think they have a bad attitude. My fragrance role model is the Sabu character in Black Narcissus, the gorgeous Technicolor Michael Powell movie. The bejeweled and turbaned prince rides to the hilltop convent on his little white pony for his daily lessons, reeking of perfume and intoxicating the poor nuns against their will. Go Sabu.
Suddenly, there is a colorful commotion at the front door of Barneys. It appears as if a group of exotic birds is attempting to gain entry. That, as it turns out, is exactly what is happening.
As they approach, I can see that these birds of paradise are carrying purses—colorful, embellished handbags with inlays of fluorescent python and jangling charms. And they are wearing cocktail dresses—exotically pleated, patterned and ruched. With their explosive coiffures and bravura maquillages, the Suns basketball wives resemble gorgeous prize-winning cockatiels. And they smell delicious.
Striking alluring attitudes and emitting wafts of Fracas and Frederic Malle, the lusciously beautiful and bejeweled ladies arrange themselves—a collage of pretzeled bare legs and brimming cleavages—in their front-row seats. The Row show begins, and a dramatic and fascinating dissonance reveals itself.
One by one, the models emerge. They are minimalist mavens in simple shapes. Slate gray, charcoal black, and petrol blue are the dominant hues. The designs are austere and graphic.
With their seaweedy hair and pasty pallor, the models appear to be in the middle of some kind of existentialist crisis. They are very Pina Bausch. The garments hang straight from their shoulders, reminding me of Norman Bates when he wears his mother’s frocks. Like Norman, the models have no curves.
The basketball wives, in sharp contrast, have lots of curves, but the differences do not end there.
The basketball wives are happy.
The Row models are haunted and melancholy.
The basketball wives are a redolent bouquet.
The Row models smell of soap and water.
The basketball wives look as if they have migrated from Costa Rica.
The Row gals don’t fly. They live in an orphanage or an incredibly chic mental hospital.
Never in the history of runway shows has there ever been a wider chasm between the gals on the runway and the gals staring at the runway.
They are like two different species, a seraglio of exotic odalisques observing a conclave of überchic fashion nuns. Cher meets Mother Teresa. Carmen Miranda goes on a date with Jane Goodall. Exuberance versus earnestness. Flamboyance versus restraint.
Sex versus fashion.
Show a hot-blooded man a photograph of deathly pale Cate Blanchett in an exquisite varicose-vein-colored Givenchy couture creation, and the chances of him puffing up his chest and saying, “I’d like to tap that!” are, let’s face it, girls, a tad remote.
When horny hetero hunks observe Tilda Swinton looking androgynous and otherworldly in a Haider Ackermann jimmy-jammy suit or a Raf Simons canary yellow shroud, it is difficult to imagine them popping a Viagra and saying, “Okay, Tilly! Let’s do it!”
If a testosterone-riddled frat boy encountered the hauntingly chic Daphne Guinness lurking in the shadows at the kegger, would he try to slip her a roofie and slip a hand in her blouse . . . or would he run back to his dorm room and begin garlanding his access points with garlic while clutching a crucifix? As filled with admiration for the style of the Right Honorable Daphne as I am, I am going to go with the latter.
What’s my point?
My point is that high fashion is simply NOT sexy. High fashion is conceptual and strange and intriguing and startling . . . but hot? Not so much.
Leandra Medine, a highly strung, brilliant, style-addicted Manhattaness, has always understood the intrinsic unhotness of La Mode. This is why, when she began writing her fashion blog, she wisely named it the Man Repeller.*
Leandra is a smart girl. She recognized that esoteric fashion is, by definition, almost a denial of sex. In order to make clothing look and feel like “high fashion,” a designer needs to strip away any suggestion of man-pleasing hoochie allure.
Back to the show.
With the exception of the moment when I introduced the ladies as “the wives of the Phoenix Pistons”—I try to stay au courant with sports teams, but there are so bloody many!—the show went off without a hitch.
At the après-show meet ’n’ shop, the birds of paradise and the little gray sparrows finally encountered one another in person. They hit it off surprisingly well. Each species scrutinized the feathers and behaviors of its polar opposite and was amused and intrigued. Nobody ate anybody.
The good-natured basketball wives cherry-picked their way through the Row offerings and, paradoxically, found the items which could be integrated into what I imagined were their vast and colorful closets. The indigo python jackets, in particular, were a big hit.
As I observed the gals interacting after the show, I could not help but ask myself the obvious question: If I had been born a chick, would I be a man repeller? Would I dress like a flamboyant bird of paradise or an existentialist fashion missionary? Would I be able to put conceptual fashion esoterica ahead of my need to dazzle and mesmerize and tantalize? Could I turn my back on flashy, frothy sensuality and, instead, take the steep and rugged path to subtlety?
My first impulse would be to lie and say, “Yes, bring me the Yohji burlap onesie! I will live a life of fashionable aesthetic purity.”
Life, however, is short. As much as I love and appreciate the Row and the other designers who inhabit the codified world of nuance and sophistication, I fear I just might be a burlesque bitch at heart. I’ll take a Jeff Koons over a Richard Serra any day.