I’ve always been a fan of fashion. At least in part by necessity, I suppose. Those of us who weren’t born with natural beauty have to make do with expensive clothes. Oh well. There are worse fates. I do take it to a bit of an extreme, though. My clothes take up about three times as much closet space as those of my wife — a significant self-indictment considering I married a model — and I have far more shoes than she does (sorry, but every gentleman’s wardrobe requires certain staples: oxfords, lace-ups, loafers, Venetian loafers, drivers, gators, casuals, plain toe, derby, monk straps, brogues, and wingtips, in black, brown, dark brown, cordovan, oxblood, merlot, burgundy, walnut, and cognac). I enjoy fashion so much that I actually like helping her shop for clothes as much as I do for myself.
In fact, Lagerfeld is having a sale right now, and just this morning I saw the most stunning black knit tweed dress with pearl trim that she would look absolutely divine in. Why not? You decorate your walls with art; I decorate my wife, who is herself a work of art. That’s one of the joys of being married. It’s not just a union of two bodies sharing one soul — it’s also a channel for artistic expression.
That reminds me: back in my single days, I remember one client who, all in one breath, asked if I wanted to meet her sister and also whether I was gay. There wasn’t even a comma in the sentence, just: “Would you like to meet my sister are you gay?” I thought that was a very odd pairing of questions. When I asked her to explain, she said she assumed I was gay because I dress so well. Well, excuse me, Ms. Polyblend Sweater! I happen to like couture, okay? What did she want me to do, stop wearing Valentino? Look, plenty of men enjoy fashion. Anderson Cooper. Neil Patrick Harris. Tom Ford. Lance Bass. Stanley Tucci’s character from The Devil Wears Prada. All the guys on Bravo. Feel silly now, do you? Good.
Anyway, my affinity for fashion has impelled me to follow the industry, albeit from a distance. Those of us who do so know that international Fashion Week season is underway. Yet, for some reason this year, as I saw the photos coming out of the shows, and even saw friends of mine attending various events, it suddenly struck me, and I don’t know why it hadn’t earlier: Hollywood had its “Me Too” moment, but fashion never really did.
You can’t tell me that in a world where models are treated as interchangeable, careers are short, and lives are often riddled with instability, there weren’t plenty of people who exploited that system for their own advantage. Have you seen how fashion designers behave? They are born eccentric (I’m imagining an infant Tommy Hilfiger in the delivery room, looking judgmentally at how the doctors and nurses are dressed) — bizarre, supercilious, and demanding — and then add money, power, and a diet of cocaine on top of it. The result is a breed of people with no parallel in nature: they throw tantrums over shades of beige, hurl mocha lattes on teenage assistants because it contains almond milk instead of soy, treat their Chihuahuas like human princesses, and sob uncontrollably if they are not hailed as geniuses for declaring that “this season is about bold shoulders.” These people make Elton John at his most tempestuous look like Dwight freakin’ Eisenhower at his most composed.
And who are the models? Author’s wife not withstanding, they are largely young people, one indistinguishable from the next, of far more supply than there is demand, who are in desperate positions and vulnerable to transactional relationships. They’re judged and hired by a handful of agents, designers, and photographers, with no shortage of sexual deviants among the ranks. The imbalance of power is staggering.
No wonder the fashion industry has long had a reputation for blurred boundaries, sexualization of very young models, rampant substance abuse, and powerful gatekeepers who control careers. On paper, it looks like a prime environment for exploitation to flourish. There’s just no way sexual manipulation happened in Hollywood and not in fashion. Not with that mixture of people, personalities, and circumstances.
So why no reckoning? Part of it, I suspect, is structural. Hollywood is centralized: big studios, big stars, and a culture where, when one person spoke out, others could rally behind them. Fashion, by contrast, is fragmented across thousands of agencies and brands in dozens of countries. Models rarely have lasting careers, which means they don’t stick around long enough to build platforms for change, and they’re not wealthy enough to risk career blacklisting. By the time they might feel secure enough to speak out, the industry has already moved on to the next face.
Maybe there’s also the fact that models are seen as objects, while actresses are seen as people because they play characters and speak and live out life (albeit simulated) in front of us. Models are already dehumanized to the point of mannequins, so there’s no emotional attachment, and no shock value to learning they are treated as less than human. Think about it: when was the last time you heard a fashion model say anything?
Combine that with a prejudice of low expectations, where exploitation in that industry is so obvious that it’s simply assumed, and nobody cares.
I still love fashion. I love good tailoring, good design, and yes, even the occasional indulgence in something extravagant. But I can’t help noticing that for all its elegance, the industry has a darkness that never faced its reckoning. And maybe that’s the real difference with Hollywood: it wasn’t that fashion had no abusers, but that the rest of us never cared enough.
And yet, we here have less of an excuse. Hollywood looked the other way. Fashion demands we look right at it.
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