People who hover about the fashion industry – writers, buyers, and hangers-on – tend to be larger-than-life characters, for whom drawing attention to themselves is part of the game. The runway shows and seasonal trends are merely backdrops for their own fluttery, fashionable selves. Andre Leon Talley, Polly Mellon, and Diana Vreeland all fit the bill. For a long time I thought of Suzy Menkes, the longtime fashion editor of the the International Herald Tribune who now contributes to the Times, this same way, as a sort of English Anna Piaggi. She bubbles over when she talks, and sports a little back pompadour like Olive Oyl’s.
But after reading her recent appreciation of Haider Ackermann, whose work she says is “just fine materials slipping over the body,” I was bowled over. All at once she expresses the excitement of discovering an unorthodox new designer, pinpoints his position within the industry, and captures the elemental power of the clothes. Read this passage, which teeters on the brink of parody but stands, somehow, as well-informed criticism: “I thought that there was a mournful note to the work, like the call of the muezzin to prayer. Yet the clothes were not sad, although they were often dark, in the way of anthracite storm clouds, a midnight sky or a puddle on a night road." There’s something that happens when a skillful writer writes about something that she cares about deeply – her language heats up and goes a bit overboard. It’s a kind of love.
