Buddhist Punk

It would have been reasonable to assume, what with Fashion Week arriving on the heels of massive anti-RNC demos, and with so many young designers vocal in their opposition to the current administration, and with the windows of Marc Jacobs's shop on Bleecker Street showcasing undies with lewd anti-Bush slogans, that this time around the catwalks would be crowded with irreverent, defiant, rebellious clothing.

Unfortunately, subversive sartorial statements were far from the rule. Instead, designers seemed hell-bent on clothing women for lives that revolve around home (a big mansion), hearth (straight out of Architectural Digest), and country club (with restrictive admission policies). With the exception of Kenneth Cole, who offered a film about voting, and Imitation of Christ, where a kid read the Pledge of Allegiance and a Bush look-alike sat in the audience, political statements were few and far between.

So pervasive was the new sobriety that three formerly frisky downtown stalwarts—Imitation of Christ, the monumentally talented As Four, and Jeremy Scott—having previously shown in, respectively, an East Village funeral parlor, a school basement, and a gallery-cum-sex club, opted for the Bryant Park tents.

The power of this lily-white (and the runways were for the most part an Aryan pipe dream of pale skin and blue eyes), members-only Republican reverie could be measured by the ascendance of Bermuda shorts, not proffered merely as sportswear but offered in such disparate fabrics as eyelet rayon (Ghost) and shimmering velvet (Peter Som). If you couldn't bear the thought of clomping around in knee-length pants paired with shiny pumps and maybe a bejeweled jacket—lavish embellishment and garish gold are other hallmarks of the season—you could don a candy-colored baby-doll dress (Marc Jacobs) or a Palm Beach–worthy bird-printed cocktail dress (As Four) or a narrow black skirt heavy with beads and feathers (Derek Lam). At least it was black: In another bad sign, that color, the urban woman's safety net, was as absent as Bush from the Guard.

...The only time we saw models who looked really happy was at a show in the Maritime Hotel by a British concern called Buddhist Punk. This was a raucous event, with Steven Tyler and Boy George in the audience, and though there were shorts here too, at least they were shown with silver platform shoes (ouch!), a corset-laced jacket, and a newsboy cap. Among the mugging models were Keith Richards's two daughters (they have been much on the runways this season) and Mick Jagger's daughter, all seemingly very much enjoying their scruffy Buddhist Punk tees and tiny skirts and turquoise boots. Leaving the show, a colleague pointed out that in any other context we would have pooh-poohed these clothes. Maybe so, but after a week of subservient-secretary garb, that old-fashioned Trash & Vaudeville spirit was downright intoxicating. read more...