I don’t care much for Guy Trebay’s writing (although I’m sure he’s a lovely person). His passion for long, winding sentences and circuitous trains of thought makes my own prose look as spare and straightforward as Ernest goddamn Hemingway. Drives me nuts.
That said, his review of the men’s shows in Milan is capped off with three of the best paragraphs I’ve read all week–which I appreciate not only because I remember Andy Williams, but also because, sadly, I was once a Judith Butler devotee. Didn’t understand but every other word the bitch said, but still: worshipped her. Today, I feel somehow vindicated…
Unlike McQueen or Prada, Frida Giannini, the stylist (“designer” is probably not the right word) at Gucci has an operative relationship to sexual presentation that is so uncomplicated and kittenlike that she makes her predecessor Tom Ford seem like some tortured soul at a Judith Butler seminar. Ms. Giannini’s show was as sexually transparent as the others were freighted or obscure.
In a way, it was not a fashion show at all. With its fur benches and fieldstone fireplace, the show resembled the set for an Andy Williams special in Aspen, circa the days when the magnesia-voiced crooner was still married to Claudine Longet.
Life was an innocent romp when the world and Gucci were young. People wore fur boots, as they did on Ms. Giannini’s runway. They wore fur parkas and carried fur totes (to keep their fur wallets warm) and if, as it actually happened, the Williams marriage would turn out to have been a mess; and Ms. Longet and Mr. Williams would eventually divorce; and Ms. Longet would take as her lover the skiing star Spider Sabich, whom she would shoot and kill in a tabloid-tale incident for which she was sentenced to 30 days (she performed community service), these small details should not detract from what is of true significance here. Everybody really does look sort of groovy in zillionaire ski bum clothes.
FYI, I think “freighted” is a misspelling or misprint or something. Second one in that article–the first being a weird, non-poetic fragment strewn across the eleventh paragraph. Does the Times even have an online editrix? Sheesh. Hire me, already….
sturtle [dot] com 