how the magic happens

Ok, so the previous post showed the stunning artistry and slick styling of a traditional runway show in all its sharp-boned glory. Here's what goes on outside that closely cropped photo.

The girls -- most models have only been on this planet 16 to 20 years -- are apparently told they won't get the puppy if they register so much as a flicker of life in their expression.  Furthermore, model training focuses on a mode of ambulation that flies in the face of physics, physiology, animation and most of the guests in the front row.  Think show pony who's had a bucket of Pucker.  Against all odds, they make it down the runway, fortified by very stout mascara, until they run into the above wall of photographers, their hip bones arriving ten minutes before the rest of the skeleton. They give a real hard glare, clatter a 180 and head back. There was only one high-heeled wobble in the Monique Lhuillier show and the model saved it with a minimum of flailing and not a blip on the flat line of her facade. That's control.  Or powerful weed.

 Holy crap, this is a rough crowd with all those undead.  I was actually able to take this photo using only the glow from my own zombie eyeballs for lighting as I was 45 minutes past my expiration date. Thus the term fashionably late.  Also the term alright already. The seating at these affairs makes the Hapsburg court look like a love-in -- celebs they've lured with free pants, buyers from Barney's, editors of major fashion magazines, trust fund chicks with names like Poppy and Nasturtium and bloggers exhausted with the effort populate the front row, and it filters down the social ladder as you go up and back until, see that black hole at the top of the photo with the barely visible shackles against the back walls? ... Well it was only 20 minutes.

What appears to be a comparison of male and female pattern balding is actually the shot I got of my favorite scalp  gowns.  The Monique Show was relatively long at 40 looks which took about 20 minutes to trot out which seems a shame -- months of work and Xanax for 20 minutes. They recycle the models, buttering their elbows to slide em out of one sausage casing and into another at great speed.  This is accomplished by legions of verklempt dressers, hair and makeup people wielding brushes and sponges and people hissing into headsets.  If you don't have a facial tic and a spinal neuroma from flinging your head around looking for someone to yell at, you have not done your job correctly.  In situations like this, I enjoy responding to frantic requests to move down to the end of the cattle chute row by walking real slow and blinking with my mouth open the slightest bit. It soothes people.