Couture Calamity

A blogging war has broken out over a Sun Herald report last week about Chinese born Sydney fashion designer Bowie Wong. The highly likable Wong has been on a fashion promotion world tour, thrilling fans with a Facebook diary penned from some of the world's ritziest hotels like Hong Kong's Peninsular and the Hotel Georges V in Paris where he is currently ensconced.
The Sun Herald reported under the title Fashion's new immortal :"Sydney's Bowie Wong has been confirmed as the first Australian-based designer to join fashion's most exclusive club: Paris haute couture. Speaking to S from Paris, Wong revealed he'll be showing his collection, Immortality, at Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week in July, alongside great names such as Chanel, Dior, Valentino and Gaultier."

Alas, all is not what it seems according to fashion expert journalist Patty Huntington writing on the influential Frockwriter website : Bowie Wong is showing during Paris haute couture week -Or how to try to sneak into fashion's most exclusive club.

 Commenting on Wong's invitation (pictured right) Huntington says :

"Just to clarify - lest anyone assume there may be some direct connection here to the world's biggest luxury brand, whose name happens to be highlighted in bold on the invitation - the Louis Vuitton Building is indeed the location of the LV flagship. But it's a large building that is also home to a variety of other totally unrelated companies, including at least one real estate agency. Level 5, coincidentally the location of Wong's show, is home to a company called Servcorp, that specialises in short-term and virtual office rentals."

Huntington has also contacted the prestige  Chambre Syndicale who zealously guard the term 'haute coutoure' much like the word Champagne is rigorously regulated by the French. The head of communications, Jimmy Pihet, has responded : "We never heard about this designer before your email and he didn't visit us at the Fédération".

Zut alors ! Where will it all end ?. The Shuttle hasn't known such excitement in the giddy world of dressmaking since a snooty social writer in London buttonholed us at a Harper's Bazaar party three years ago and said : "it really annoys me the way you Australians call gowns, 'frocks' "

Read the full story at Frockwriter.com  and watch a video of Bowie's fashion show (presumably several floors above Louis Vuitton) on Agence France-Press. And is that top UK fashion journalist Suzy Menkes taking notes ?

 

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Our exclusive pic ( left) shows Double Bay society hairdresser Joh Bailey with a new customer - Oscar winning legendary actress Jane Fonda who checked into town for a flying visit yesterday to open a Fitness First exercise centre in the city at the ungodly hour of 6am.   Fonda did the round of Morning TV shows before fleeing the country, missing the excitement at the Gold Coast's Broadbeach Fitness First the same day where a brawl broke out with one unfortunate participant ending up in hospital with an almost severed hand.

 

Fabulous No-Bodies

Ground Hog Day

The Shuttle met the designer Oscar de la Renta in Sydney a few years ago. It was at a party in a marquee erected outside the Park Hyatt Hotel with a magnificent view across to the Sydney Opera House.
Oscar arrived with the late Lady Sonia McMahon. He said he loved Sydney and Melbourne and wished he had discovered the cities much earlier. As to a question on  Australian fashion :"it shows promise" was the master's diplomatic reply.

What Oscar would think about the froth and bubble of the 2 cities seasonal fashion shows is a mystery. Same guest list, same location, same designers. Each and every show is like a repeat of the last. Just the fabrics change.
 One social writer recently resorted to trilling about the seating arrangements at the last David Jones show, excitedly reporting that they had scored a front row seat and that a fashion publicist who had incurred their displeasure had been relegated to the back row.
The inanity of the reporting (possibly influenced by the heavy advertising of Australia's 2 leading department store chains) is as vacuous as the guest list-"fabulous nobodies" in every sense. A series of alleged social faces who feature at every event as Ipad wielding publicists breathlessly inform the feverish paparazzi of  the arrival of yet another footballer or TV news announcer. At least the French champagne proffered soothes the boredom.

Now Oscar de la Renta has declared war on these guest lists and is to ban them from his New York 2014 parades : "decision-makers in the business should not have to fight their way through "30,000 people, and 10,000 who are trying to take pictures of all of those people, who are totally unrelated to the clothes". And he has allies on the New York Times including Cathy Horyn and the legendary Susy Menkes.  Perhaps it's fortunate Mr de la Renta didn't experience Sydney & Melbourne's low-rent-a-crowds and departed with fond memories of our local fashion industry.