Fashion Week: Marc Jacobs, There's A Greatness To Your Lateness!

I always promised myself that I'd never complain about how a show was run in print. It seemed a waste of time on the part of the readers. But when I have been away from New York for almost 10 years and I come back to find that the Marc Jacobs show is, again, fantastically late, I have to rethink. Marc is late the way no one else is late. Marc is late despite the fact that KCD do his shows and run everything with Swiss watch-making precision. Fortunately, I was having pre-show drinks (anyone notice a theme here?) with Harriet Quick of British Vogue and our own Felix Salmon. Harriet had some connections back stage and was getting up to the second texts from backstage on the progress of the show. "The Clothes Are Arriving!" came at 10:00. The show was due to start at 9:00. I decided Marc's lateness was evidence of some sort of insecurity. "Look who is willing to stick around until 11pm for a 9pm show!," he must think. (Anna, Andre, just about everyone except Barney's Simon Doonan who left because the doorman to his building goes off duty at 11pm and he'd be locked out.) Harriet had another theory: "Whenever Marc is this late, it means he is getting really creative," she said.

So, how was the show? "Grey Gardens" was the word in the bathroom stalls. Like most Marc shows, it will take a while to digest. When he showed "volume" dresses in 2004, two former retailers I worked with laughed out loud. No one was laughing this season, some three years later, when every junior fashion editor walked into the shows in a tent dress. I would have called it Grey Gardens meets Comme des Garcons. It was 1950s housewife on shoes with broken heels. Check it out for yourself:

Was it genius? Probably. But there are people better equipped than me to explain why. Was it a PR stunt? I'll only say this -- all the celebrities arrived fashionably late, only moments after we did.

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