Once upon a time, there was a fashion editor (who admittedly doesn’t look like one) who showed up on time and full of the joys of Fall 2017 to review the Au Jour Le Jour show for Vogue Runway. But oh! The big, badly-briefed wolves at the door wouldn’t let him in, however much he huffed and puffed (which admittedly wasn’t much). Eventually—even though he looked like a photographer and was treated with disdain (which is very poor manners, because if you think about it, fashion kind of needs photographers)—he managed to ooze in, along with a few models who were also stranded outside.
Once he walked up the grand flight of stairs and into the fancy room full of excited people, he found that everyone was waving around smartphones and tripping over the runway set. It was covered in sticks and wood chips. The confused fashion editor, who didn’t have his invitation because sometimes these things happen, politely asked a staff member with a list if she wouldn’t mind checking his seating allocation. “Talk to her,” commanded this important person, pointing at a colleague before walking off with impressive purpose. The confused fashion editor, silly fellow, repeated his polite plea yet again (careful to say please and thank you, as his mother once taught him). But oh! Again it fell on deaf ears. “I only deal with bloggers and celebrities,” he was informed.
Oh, woe! Whatever could he do? How would he be able to review this show without a spot to sit? Luckily the blogger-wrangler saw the sad non-blogging, non-celebrity, camera-carrying nobody’s jaw drop: The funny fellow in banal clothing without a domain name to call his own needed to be dealt with somehow.
Once backstage, the slightly less-joyful-than-before fashion editor listened to the young and dynamic designers behind Au Jour Le Jour, Mirko Fontana and Diego Marquez, explain that they had been inspired by Aesop’s fables. Their collection mixed felt and crochet decoration, which symbolized educational parables such as The Fox and The Grapes and The Wolf and The Lamb. It was also, putatively, about clothes you’d wear to go to sleep—perhaps because the fables were, for so many centuries, the international go-to for bedtime stories—so there were some pajama suits and plenty of super-sheer buttock-skimming lingerie minidresses. Also, there was a embroidered bathrobe dress and plenty of colorful coats and whatnot in teddy bear fluffy stuff. It was absolutely fine and frothy. The menswear was quite a laugh too. There is no moral to this story—but it quite was fun to tell. The end.
