Bash Compactor: Trashy Fashion

My mother once told me, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” I think. No, that’s incorrect.

My mother used to say, “Honey, can you open me another bottle of wine,” and that other one was something everyone else’s parents threw around. My rebuttal to those parents who extolled the virtues of this expression: You are not starving freelance journalists, and you have never been asked to cover alleged rock star and hair gel enthusiast Pete Wentz’s fashion show.

While Wentz’s collection for Clandestine was most certainly not going to include the fashion elite who haunted the tents at Bryant Park, it did offer one of the most delightful of Fashion Week treats: quick and easy check-in courtesy of producers Style360. Within minutes of entrance I had my seat number, a much-needed bottle of Fiji water, a gift bag that included hair goo and Pop Chips.

The lights went down on time as The Bad Rabbits, a group of twenty-something guys, took to the stage to perform a few of what I assumed were signature jams. Wentz’s taste in music wasn’t terrible, but his design capabilities… well, imagine every item that ever sat on a sale rack of an Urban Outfitters in 2002. At the end, Mr.Wentz was wheeled out in an upright gurney wearing a Hannibal Lecter mask to rapturous applause from the crowd. Apparently everyone else’s gift bag contained mind-altering substances.

Following the parade of outfits, I attempted to speak with Wentz about his decision to show sleeveless logo sweatshirts and guyliner application but was rebuffed. His wife, former celebrity Ashlee Simpson, was wearing a Winona Ryder circa Heathers getup and was the first to rush backstage following the show, perhaps to distance herself from the spectacle.

Leaving the venue dejected, I found each model carrying a white trash bag containing his or her pay for the evening: catwalk clothes and shoes.While some seemed content with their lot, others were not so much. “Give me your pack of cigarettes and you can have my shoes,” boy beauty Trent pleaded with a fellow model. Upon being rebuffed he lowered the offer: “Five cigarettes and you get these.” Maybe it was the size, maybe it was the faux Adidas design where the three stripes were instead two, but his fellow catwalker continued to refuse the offer.