Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/111120
I t was the slap heard ���round the fashion world. At Zac Posen���s show last September, a front-row reshuffle caused an editor from a French magazine to be moved from her prized seat to less prestigious accommodations. Did she graciously retreat to her new perch? What do you think? In the ensuing dust-up, she smacked the Posen PR girl, resulting in lawsuits, counter-suits and lots of gossip. It wasn���t always like this. Fashion shows used to be dignified affairs, consisting of one or maybe two rows of gold chairs arrayed in a showroom and the only people in the audience were boring industry professionals. So secretive were the proceedings that attendees were forbidden to photograph or even sketch, the clothes���hard to believe today, when pictures of every look flood the web before the final model has pulled her wig off. James LaForce, whose firm LaForce + Stevens has been seating fashion shows for the last 30 years, is happy to provide a little history. LaForce says that everything began to change when the tents went up in Bryant Park in 1993. Gradually, over the last two decades, the venues grew more dramatic, the shows became theater, magazine editors were no longer anonymous scribes but celebrities in their own right, stars on the red carpet gave shout-outs to their favorite designers and expected tickets in return and before you knew it, everyone from Bryanboy (one of the first really successful fashion bloggers) to the Brant boys (the notorious young sons of Stephanie Seymour and Peter Brant���shouldn���t they be in school?) was indulging in this desperately chic version of Simon Says. In my life as a fashion reporter, I have seen with my own eyes such superluminaries as Miss Diana Ross at DVF and the surprisingly diminutive-in-real-life Madonna (so late she had to stand) at Marc Jacobs. I have gawked at Beyonc�� and Taylor Swift, both at the same Rodarte show (quite a coup for two designer-sisters from California.) I am ashamed to admit that I had no idea who Andy Murray was, though he was causing quite a stir at Burberry in London. I have sat behind (see, I myself am not always in the front row) the renowned drag performer The Lady Bunny, whose platinum beehive was so high I couldn���t see a thing. Last year, I was nearly trampled to death by a claque of photographers stalking Kim and Kanye at Marchesa. 160 BAL HARBOUR Fashion shows used to be dignified affairs, consisting of one or maybe two rows of gold chairs arrayed in a showroom and the only people in the audience were boring industry professionals. Some of these celebrities have a real love of fashion���the aforementioned Kanye, in fact, adores it so much he designed his own ill-fated line and showed it in Paris for two seasons. But others, according to dark whispers, are only in the house because they are being paid handsomely. Still, ask yourself, what exactly is so wrong with this? If they are flouncing around in these duds, being photographed everywhere from Topeka to Taipei, shouldn���t a few bucks float in their direction? And as for the social girls occupying prime real estate���if you were a designer, wouldn���t you want a dazzling creature or three in your front row? Wouldn���t you save a seat for the glamorous DJ Harley Viera-Newton or the jewelry designer Gaia Repossi? Make room for model-slash-editor Giovanna Battaglia and stylist-slashChanel-brand-ambassador Caroline Sieber. How about a warm and friendly welcome to Alexia Niedzielski, co-founder of Ever Manifesto (and Charlotte Casiraghi���s best friend) and Russia-born celebutante Dasha Zhukova? Elettra Wiedemann, the daughter of Isabella Rossellini (not to mention that her grandma, as you may recall, got on the plane to Lisbon with Victor Laszlo) is no stranger to the front row, but she is also a thoughtful person���and diplomatic too, it turns out. When she���s asked about front row shenanigans she replies, ���Sometimes I think it is ridiculous, but I also now understand that fashion show seating is a materialization of the fashion playing field and all its players. First row people are the ones who are considered to have the power, or are the influencers��� When you arrive at a show and you think you are a friend of the designer and then you are seated in the nose bleeds, I can understand that feelings get hurt.��� But those whose egos bruise easily, who find themselves shunted to row 11 in a 10-row venue, might take heart from the case of the photographer Bill Cunningham, who is living proof that if you stick around long enough, good things will happen. Cunningham, who has been chronicling fashion for a half-century, often doesn���t seem to even have a ticket to a show, let alone a seat number. But given his legendary talent and modest demeanor, when he strolls in, chic in his blue French worker���s jacket, camera slung around his neck, the front row denizens, regardless of how rarefied, immediately sidle over and, no matter how tight the seating, make room for one more. BH