Sick City Windows

… I mean presentation!

Four menswear designers showed at Milk Studios on Sunday. Unlike traditional runway shows, these were presentations, and presentations they were. With the exclusion of Carlos Campos (whose show was sickkk); in an art gallery like viewing, meandering from one room to the next of barefoot musicians and video projections, these shows as interesting and “different” as they were, were just distractions at best.

No doubt nouveau- salivating over the most handsome models aligned in a grid on tapestries, or leaning against a wall, these non-conventional deliveries did little more than take away from the main focus of the show, which, during Fashion Week is all about the clothes!

When a designer’s tailoring speaks volumes, it’s the only symphony you need to hear. There is no cause for an over the top show, the trite stuff of look books, the elusive mirrors and smoke… It needs not sell itself on anything more than its construction and call me old-fashioned but I say fuck the presentation! Would you ever catch Cindy Crawford in a Lady Gaga ensemble and over the top head dress? No- she doesn’t need to distract, overcompensate or create an aura of beauty- she is just beautiful…

And let me just clarify that these collections were in fact great, and the world definitely needs more dapper dudes its just that their singular “individuality” was staunchly overpowered by their collective dissonance. Rather than bask in their edgy and cool constructions, these shows tried way too hard to be the stuff of edgy and cool… Perhaps they could use a lesson in the school of The Window Shopper that there is a difference between thinking your cool and knowing your fabulous…