blame it on the assistants

So yesterday "The Gates" by Cristo was unveiled in Central Park. It will only be on display for 16 days. We had already been planning to go up to NY this spring but there's no way we could get there in two weeks. It would have been nice to see a Cristo in person but what can you do. I hope that one of the New Yorkers reading this will go see it and write about the experience and post some photos.

In other news, Fashion Week just wrapped up. Last night the Style channel did a two hour special. Which was, as you would expect from Style, light on the fashion commentary and heavy on the celebrities. Especially celebrity "designers" like Sean John, Baby Phat and now J. Lo. I was amused that, though the Style people uniformly called Kimora Lee Simmons the Baby Phat designer, they ran a quote from Simmons herself admitting that she is not a designer. Something to the effect of "I'm the creative director, so I'm responsible for the way everything looks." Which probably means "I tell the designers in vague terms what I want to see, and they design the clothes, but my name is on them."

I don't expect hard-hitting fashion reporting (as much as such a thing even exists) from Style, but the program never even let on that the Marc Jacobs show had been controversial. We found that out from the NY Times this morning. They said it was his most controversial collection since the "grunge fashion" show he did for Perry Ellis in the early 90s. Which was a success for him, in the sense that it made him famous, but was a terrible flop for Perry Ellis, in the sense that it sold so poorly they had to pull it mid-season. I wonder if this one will be like that, and if it will be more of a problem for Jacobs now that he's designing under his own name.

The funny part was the Times reporter who leapt to the conclusion that Jacobs must have very young design assistants, and that he must have allowed them free reign this season. She kind of came across sounding like the clothes were an unsophisticated interpretation of styles that were played out fifteen years ago, and the brilliant Marc Jacobs ™ could never blow it like that, and therefore he must have passed the whole collection off to some young assistants who didn't know any better. But I might have been misinterpreting her.

I must say it wasn't my favorite Marc Jacobs collection ever. I like his delicate, pretty clothes better. Maybe he got tired of designing pretty things. (I did like the low heels & hope that catches on.) Despite her criticism, that woman from the Times professed to like the collection. In particular a coat that I dubbed the mink potato sack. I wonder if fashion reporters feel obligated to praise the clothes no matter what, to ensure continued access.