Witty view of the weird world of fashion

Published Oct 13, 2015

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Tales From the Back Row

Amy Odell

(Simon & Schuster)

 

The latest news on the fashion front is that ST is the new FROW.

Decoded, this apparently means that the z-list standing places at the back of fashion shows, which used to be about as cool as elastic-waisted slacks, are now considered more desirable than the front row, where celebrities such as Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue, roost on hard little chairs whose spindly legs are scarcely thinner than their own skinny limbs.

If the FROW is in decline, it must be partly thanks to Amy Odell, a sharp-tongued American fashion blogger with a healthy lack of respect for an industry the eccentricities of which she chronicles in this entertaining account.

Odell grew up in Austin, Texas, and the first sign of her passion for fashion came when, aged six, she fell hopelessly in love with a pair of glittery shoes: “No shoes had ever been destined to be worn by both Liberace and a six-year-old girl quite like these.”

It was the start of a journey that would find her, years later, watching the bizarre spectacle of New York Fashion week – from the back row, naturally.

“The fashion industry,” she observes, “is a study in how deeply we long to stand out in order to fit in.”

It is a longing she shares, even though she can’t resist pointing out its rich absurdity. One of Odell’s endearing characteristics is a certain recklessness about offending big names.

It is carefully calibrated, I am sure - she didn’t become editor of Cosmopolitan.com and one of the Forbes list of “30 under-30” powerful media figures by randomly dissing fashion’s great and good.

There’s an unforgettable pen-portrait of stylist Rachel Zoe inarticulate with excitement at one colourful show: “Oh. My God. I. Can’t. Even. Handle. The.Purple.”

And there are sparkling comic vignettes of Karl Lagerfeld’s appearance at his own book launch (“his look is… a cross between the Founding Fathers and Michael Jackson”) and, most memorably, a car crash of a job interview with Wintour.

Warned not to wear black, because “Anna is all about colour”, and not to talk about tennis because “Anna knows everything about it”, Odell arrived at the Vogue office, resplendent in a borrowed cream Michael Kors shift dress, only to be flummoxed by a gentle underarm lob of a question from Wintour about museums.

Alas, it turns out that Wintour is all about museums, too, so that’s Odell’s chance of a job blown.

For anyone who has ever spent R1 000 on a pair of designer sweatpants, this affectionately acerbic account of the fashion world’s irrepressible weirdness is essential reading.

 

Daily Mail

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