I say out. As someone who has been to many fashion shows, most fashion people won’t sit through more than 20 minutes of a runway show. There’s a reason: They get boring, really quickly. Last Saturday night, the DIVA MN show started at 7:30 and didn’t finish until after 10. It was a fashion marathon, without much-needed water.

This is not meant to detract from the worthy cause of the fundraiser, but the amateurish production just seemed to happen. Models were booked only a week ahead of time, making fittings near impossible. They weren’t paid, nor were designers. The same goes for hair and makeup. The result was dozens of scarily crimped hairdos, more like ’80s bedhead than anything I’ve seen in recent memory.

 For an organization (DIVA MN) that is trying to put on a professional show and be the local fashion event of the year, it seems like it would be worth an investment in professionals. I’m fairly confident that the catering was paid for, why not the entertainment? Are our expectations for a fashion show or any type of entertainment really this low?

In terms of the actual fashions, there wasn’t much depth. Models could barely shuffle down the runway in some of the ill-fitting dresses and skirts. Carlos Chavez, receiving his second design honor in less than a year, is more of a skillful tailor than designer. His ballooned gowns are cartoonish, not high fashion. Kit Cusick’s clothes are basically overblown period costumes and Aglaia Vital’s lingerie felt gratuitous. I can’t imagine anyone ever buying or wearing any of these pieces.

There were glimmers of hope for local design: Jason Hammerberg’s extremely commercial Humble, Joy Teiken’s feminine, fitted Joynoelle and Katherine Gerdes’ wearable jersey evening collection. By the time these “core designers” were on stage at 9:30, I’m not sure anyone was still watching or still sober enough to see anything but a high-heeled blur. As someone who didn’t have a single cocktail, I thought some of the emerging designers were better than the featured designers. However, there was so such relentless quantity paraded in front of the audience, that I’m guessing most attendees would be hard put to describe any single item.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.