Moving in on the Front Row

Mohammed Bryan

13 February 2010

"I just declared no to 3 celebs who wished to come to Michael's show,"related Mr Daley, the communications director for Mr Kors, identifying the type as "terribly obscure and dynamic actresses who may or won't be the following Blake Lively."Their Hollywood publicists had requested seats to the show, which is on Wed. . Media reports last week that cast members of the Italian-American beach-house controversy could be seated with the style experts at Big Apple Fashion Week produced moans of "Oh, no, not them.".

The reports turned out to be pure ballyhoo, the work of an aptitude agent for a couple of cast members who said a number of fashion homes had extended invites. Later on Emily Yeomans, a communications chief at MTV, asserted that not one of the cast had plans to attend shows, nor had any designers invited them.

In flush times, fashion homes spend tiny fortunes in time and money attempting to get one massive catch for their front row : a star whose picture qualifies as an endorsement and will most likely be seen everywhere. This is particularly the case in Paris and Milan, where budgets and appetites for stars are that much bigger. Yet this season, due to the economy and a general souring on celebrity, many designers are taking a budget approach to V.I.P.'s, paying for a guest's outfit for the show and perhaps grooming and car-service costs. A publicist for a few Big Apple designers declared his clients had been approached by actresses in L. A. ready to grace their front rows - provided travel costs were covered. Also on guest lists, according to KCD, a hoopla and show production company, are the actress Zoe Saldana, the crooner Maxwell and Alexa Chung, the previous MTV host who has her very own namesake bag from Mulberry. Perhaps the blunt mercantile sides of celebrity - your frock for my recognizable face - have turned off the taste-makers. Now, like a worn rut in a road, the entire business of celebrity appears so well established as to be old and familiar, and in fashion, hopelessly engrossed with the new, that makes it deserving of disregard. The fashion world scorns anything - camp taste, bad hair - till all of a sudden it's in its interest to approve them, and then the concept is genius. Who can say when that may happen? But it'll help if "Jersey Shore,"that has just been replenished for a second season, is still a smash.