Final Thoughts on Spring 2009 by Peter

Fashion Week ended Saturday. My hangover started to get better Monday night, but in midtown, financiers woke to bank failures and stocks in a deep slide. Bad sign. Fashion might be a great escape from harsh truth, but it has a dark crush on deep capital. Prosperity generates an optimism that reminds me of Brasilia, the capital city designed from scratch around dreams of the space age, the promise of the modern, and upper-class aspiration. As applied to fashion, here is that theme in the Calvin Klein show:

Admittedly, in New York, Big Money usually takes the form of HGH-replacement Brioni shouting, "Models and bottles, baby!" at an after-party bar. Fortunately, the broke creative class also knows how to dress. We're likely to see them inspired by the following looks this Spring:

Pac-Man ghosts play cleverly over a Paris on the Prairie look at Nolcha's NY Profile show.

I had trouble embracing Anna Sui's tribal, folkloric, and Age of Aquarius riffs, but here they come together in a sexy and harmonious way (especially the pom-poms). When I found myself wandering around a music festival this summer in the ninety-five degree blazing Texas sun, a woman in a similar dress came up to me and said, "cup your hands," then poured out some water from a hand-carved ladle. "Nice ladle," I said. "Happiness is handmade," she said, and turned back into the crowd.

I wish I had some grand conclusion to offer you about Spring '09. Instead, I leave you with two life lessons learned from the excesses of the week. First, don't frighten perfectly nice publicists over email with your personal idiotic theories on life. It's like that old advice columnist Aunt Lois, whose slogan was "advice you didn't ask for, from someone you will not like." Sorry about that. And also, never accept a drink from a woman who introduces herself as a "Uruguayan impresario." Trust me, the conversation is going to get strange. Like bad strange.

With love from the tents - Your faithful correspondent - Peter