Red Admirable

by Alexa Clay

Can you get me something to eat? One, no make that two, celery sticks.
–Photographer from Elle Magazine

9.05 AM
Everyone is speaking Italian or French so the very Anglo words “Red” and “Admirable” glide in, undigested to Euro-ears. “We are based in New York,” I add, and that begins to unlock their jaws some.

9.30 AM
My first port of call is Exhibition, which is like the purgatory of the fashion world. It’s for the “up & coming” designers to lawn their wears. In reality, there is a Calvinist narrative at work. The die of insider caprice has been thrown and the Exhibition is really just good ole anxious play-acting against a backdrop of predestination.

The tent is a cross between science fair stalls and fin de siècle decadence. The tempo is one of longing and urgency, but the landscape is utterly sans cigarette. Luckily, there are many other (free!) opiates to entice—bottles of Evian, espresso, champagne, and sexxxy objectified humans, of which, coke-addled photographers with concave behinds constitute the bulk of my Safari-gazing.

11.15 AM
Decidedly, this is not the place for anyone named Melvin. Even the cheese platter is feeling uncomfortable and out of place. It sits dejected, barely caressed, but with a solitary stroke from a knife blade that implied performance and evaded digestion.

Just as I am beginning to sense my own discomfort, a realization delayed because of all the distractions, I glimpse a DJ with proper Euro-mullet and a post-ironic mustache. Anything on the spectrum of irony would feel cuddly at this point. I move in to confirm speculation (re: mustache). Hmmmm. Hard to tell.

2 PM
Then there is the woman with a soul, displaying pseudo-sailor hats. The children’s book, Caps for Sale, comes to mind and unconsciously I suspect we may have a visit from some monkeys pretty soon. Anyway, the lady is quick to tell me their line isn’t doing so hot in Milan, but is the “flame in Paris.” She hopes they’ll be able to get noticed in London. I offer to take her photo, mostly because she looks a lot like my 42-yr-old step-grandmother.

5.30 PM
“Ethical and beautiful? You can be both!” Claims this annoyingly earnest ad campaign from Adili. Don’t get me wrong I’m all about earnestness, though more easily becoming for men than women. Indeed, a stormy-earnest blend is best on women, while men are privy to a greater range of pure earnest embodiments. Anyway, yes, ethics and beauty merge as the green fashion movement (a.k.a. eco-fashion) came out in full-force at London fashion week.

My pedantic personae will kindly point out, that what is historically groundbreaking about green consumerism is that issues of ethics and conscience are no longer in the domain of deliberative rationality (circa Kant). Now you can just buy things to satiate your conscience. Sooooo ethics increasingly is defined by an automatism unknown to former centuries! Word.

6.20 PM
Make some phone calls to designers to confirm locales of catwalk shows and then pop next door to Natural History Museum. Immediately the fossil aesthetic is cleansing. People are laughing, wrinkles are forming, the elements of play abound. Compared to the Exhibition, museum sterility is nonexistent. Through a display glass I catch sight of a stuffed Griffon Stork—raw, inquisitive, elegant in its awkwardness. I stare at it for a good fifteen minutes and feel utterly rejuvenated. The fashion world has a lot to learn.

Alexa Clay is a philosopher. She lives in a London aviary.