Attending a Fashion Show in Paris

Here’s some shocking news: I’m not that into fashion. You’ve probably noticed that almost everything I wear is black and meant to draw as little attention to me as possible, and would likely be unsurprised to learn that I spend a good deal more on soccer cleats than on any other footwear. Sophie, my nine year old, is another story. When she was four I gave her five dollars at the Ladner market to spend however she liked and she bought a scarf. In my usual dodgy parenting style, I tried to convince her that she’d probably rather have candy or toys, but she insisted, and damn it if she hasn’t worn that scarf to death in the ensuing years, and sometimes even worn it in ways interesting enough that I’ve kind of wished I had a scarf like that. Even before we came on this trip, she told me she wanted to be a fashion designer and move to Paris when she grows up.

After hearing about it from my friend Roberta (who did this last year) we decided to go to a fashion show in Paris. I booked our tickets for it three months in advance, and Sophie was so excited about it she made up a big poster for school, did a presentation about it to her class, and literally jumped up and down every time it came up in conversation.

The tickets said the show had a ‘smart casual’ dress code, so the girls, and Sophie especially, meticulously planned their outfits – and I’m proud to say that those outfits did not include reeboks. But how can the phrase ‘smart casual’ mean so many things to so many different people? Looking across the runway before the show started, I counted at least eight audience members in t-shirts with printing on them. One of them was a Hello Kitty t-shirt, and even with my severely challenged sense of fashion, I can tell that kind of sucks. (Although if it had been one of those ones that said “Goodbye Kitty” and had a picture of someone throwing their cat into the clothes dryer, I could have accepted that as an ironic interpretation of the word smart, and perhaps even been slightly impressed.)

Everyone around us was American, or so it seemed. At one point, right before the show started, I heard one woman behind me say, in a southern accent “Oh what I would give for some Pizza Hut with chip-oat-a-lee dipping sauce right now,” – an appalling thing to hear in Paris, a city with such sophisticated, magnificent food. When I turned around saw that the woman who had said it was wearing mom jeans and a flowered sweatshirt, I wanted to feel especially superior, but then I realized that upon hearing it, I was totally craving pizza now too, and that it was with a heavy sigh that I admitted to myself that we were not so very different after all.

But you know who else was probably thinking about food? The models. From our seats in the second row, the first thing we noticed was not the clothes, but rather how shockingly skinny the models were. It was actually kind of gross. (Take either of my tall, beautifully well proportioned daughters, add 8 or 9 inches in height, and that’s what they looked like. The models probably weighed the same as a normal sized 10 year old.)

Otherwise, the show itself: cool. The music was loud and funky, and the clothes were pretty, although there seemed to be a lot of orange and green stuff and one model wore a seriously ugly gold sweater that would have looked good on Michael Jackson in the 80s. With all the planning and waiting we did before the show, it was surprising to see how quickly it all went. The kids loved it.

At the end, the models all stood onstage at once in their final outfits, put their arms around each other and had a big group hug before they left the stage together as we clapped. What happened next? Here’s what I imagine: they all went backstage and sat down sighing. Then one of them would have said “Hey, it’s Friday night, shall we all go get something to eat?” And there would have been this awkward pause, and then one girl would have burst out laughing, saying “she said ‘eat’!’ bahahaha!” and then they would all join in and laugh hysterically, except the one who had eaten half a celery stick before the show, who would start crying out of guilt and then fall to the ground and start doing crunches.

After the laughter died away, they probably gathered around a tiny window that showed us, the great unwashed masses, all slowly exiting the audience area through one gate, like cattle. Maybe they even made mooing sounds as they watched us, to hide the grumbling noises their stomachs made.