Welcome back to Modelslips, in which our anonymous fashion week model Tatiana "slips" about what it's really like trying not to "slip" while starving herself down the runways of New York's inimitable Fashion Week. Yesterday she worked a job for a Top American Designer! Sound glamorous? It was sooooo not.

Top American Designers don't cast models like me in their shows. They always plump for at least one token "new" girl with buzz, an Abbey Lee or a Karlie Kloss, but their true desire and budget leans toward the established set. Top American Designers cast Freja, Anja, Magdalena, Natasa P and Caroline T., all the many-voweled, leggy, Vogue-nabbing girls with abused hair, perfect skin (well, okay, Caroline T had a big zit on the side of her forehead yesterday morning), and bulging portfolios.

There's just one problem with casting your show directly from the tippety-top of the women's board: Olga, Agnete, Denisa, etc. tend to be rather in demand just now. You should be able to get each of them in for a brief fitting. But when you're a Top American Designer, you don't have one workroom, filled with a bunch of sweet Latina grandmothers who can set sleeves in their sleep, turning out garment after garment. You have things coming from this sample producer and that, knitwear arriving from thither and yon, things being tailored here and there, and the shoes you've designed being shipped from factories near and far.

In the days before a show, when your sleepless, overworked design team's various ideas are harvested from points of manufacture all over the world, you tend to need a little bit of time to make sure everything fits — one sample house's interpretation of a Size 2 is not necessarily another's — and that, you know, the colors match and the things with the highest markups, the shoes and bags, are properly thrown into relief by the outfits. Anabela's hardly going to stick around for hours and miss the Temperley show while your styling team sorts through a giant pile of items to come up with forty-odd runway looks. But for a hundred or so bucks an hour, I will.

My odyssey began simply enough. Early in the morning, I walked up to a nondescript workroom, full of people too important to follow smoke-free workplace legislation. Maybe fifteen minutes later, I tried on a look from a collection that appeared generally decent — wearable, mass-market-friendly, reworked 1970s and 1940s styles for people too scared to shop vintage — with the help of four dressers. The head stylist looked at me from the neck down, puffed out her lips, and vetoed it. I sat back down for the rest of hour while the team came up with something else.

It soon became apparent that this was not a happy showroom. Trying to be a team player, I complimented the cut of a shirt with a flattering cowl and fluttery sleeves. "This looks so, uh, vintage; it's beautiful," I murmured to one of the assistant stylists. "Oh, it's just a knockoff of something old," he said, glumly. When an assistant dared approach the head stylist, deep in contemplation of a wall of Polaroids, for a fabric choice, she wheeled around and said, "Do I look like I have eyes in the back of my head? A set of arms growing back there? Wait a fucking minute, okay?!" Forgetting she hadn't yet assigned me a pair of shoes to match the skirt and turtleneck I'd donned, she hissed at me to get something on my feet. "I won't even look at you girls without heels! I can't dress you without your fucking shoes. Which heels? The gold slingbacks!" The assistant asked again what size I was, and when I told him 38, he returned minutes later with a pair of 36.5s. Just then one of the polysyllabic names waltzed in, everyone's voices rose by a delighted octave, like a married couple interrupted mid-fight by the pizza guy, and I was dispatched to spend another thirty minutes reading the Times.

Looks proceeded at a snail's pace all day. Only the accessories man seemed genuinely happy; "I think we have a real something, a real edge, here with these bags," he said into a reporter's mini tape recorder. "We have the crocodile, the Italian calfskin, the pony. These are going to be huge for us." (Perhaps he hasn't heard?)Someone else spoke very carefully to the same reporter about the role of music in the life of the head designer. What kind of music? "Lately, Wyclef Jean."

I found it stupendous to imagine that all these people — these lounging, sighing, shiftless men and women, myself included, spending the day occasionally opening new bottles of water — were being paid. Sometimes, on the days when the creativity doesn't exactly crackle through the air, and the standing and walking and posing seems like slog for more reasons than just the too-small shoes, it hits me that this is an industry that tolerates horrendous, offensive levels of waste here in the Western upper echelons, at the same time as it diddles Third-World garment workers out of sadly needed pennies. Top American Designer, like numerous brands of its stature, is known for having its clothes made in the U.S. commonwealth of Saipan. MADE IN THE USA labels can be affixed; U.S. labor laws need not be followed. The head designer, present yesterday, makes a minimum of $14.5 million per annum, plus additional stock options, I read in WWD. The head designer is a billionaire.

The pace of the styling did not improve as the day wore on, and it was dark by the time I left to go home. Thank God for reading material, and Japanese food. Today, I'm back to walking in more shows — of course, I can't tell you which ones. At this point I'll gladly take the frenetic energy of a runway show, even one that pays in clothes, over the dead air in that room. It is really possible to suck all the fun and performance and beauty out of fashion by making it this giant, world-sourced, automated, machine of perpetual wealth. Bring on the shows; what they have in store for my hair notwithstanding.

• Locked up and therefore unusable
  
• occupying valuable parking spaces that might otherwise be used by actual bicyclists
  
• and/or chained illegally to trees
  
• shamelessly/tastelessly aping the "Ghost Bike" phenomenon whereby bicyclists killed in the line of carbon footprint reduction are memorialized with decorative bikes chained near the intersections at which they died.

The reader writes:

well when i cut the lock at prince and west broadway this old lady looked incredibly frightened. she sort of froze and her jaw was hanging open. i think she thought i was going to mug her. then i headed over to prince and broadway to free the bike in front of dean and deluca. while i was setting up the bolt cutters an old couple walked by. it was saturday afternoon and they were out shopping. the man said: I hope that's your bike. i said: it's not mine, it's donna karen's. and i'm not taking it. i'm just taking off the lock. at this point they looked perplexed. i said, it's like graffiti, trash. they leave this stuff all over the city. and expect somebody else to come clean it up! well, that's what i'm doing. and the woman said: 'ah, yes.' the couple nodded with understanding and approval. by this point 20 seconds had passed and i was still struggling with the bolt cutters and the chain the woman said: i think we'd better get out of here.

Happy fash week, Donna!

It's A Bike! It's A Message! No, It's An Ad [Portfolio]
The Orange Bike DKNY.com Marketing Scheme Thwarted In East Village [Flickr]
Five Things We Liked Tuesday [New York Mag]
DKNY Orange Bike In Trash [NYC Bike Polo]

Greetings! And welcome to Modelslips, Jezebel's inside guide to Fashion Week as seen through the gimlet eyes of our very own 35-inch hipped, gel-schellacked, battle-weary, jealous boyfriend-having human clothes hanger! Our Anonymodel will be dishing it out all Fashion Week, so she can't use her real name, which is why we'll call her Tatiana. She's smart! She's thin! And she's BEHOLDEN TO NO ONE. We'll be checking in with Tatiana all week, as she goes from show to show to party to hotel lobby to afterparty etc. etc.. In this inaugural post, she answers some of our most pressing questions — and opens the floor to you!

Good afternoon, it's your fashion week mole, Tatiana. You don't need to know much about me, but I will tell you that English is my first language, I have attended college, and I'm a woman. Like most of my tribe, I came to New York Fashion Week jobless and penniless so I could attend 974 castings, drink a few gallons of free booze and hopefully, somewhere, somehow, get an actual company to pay me actual money for an actual job. I decided to mark this first (and kinda boring) Friday of Fashion week by taking on some of Moe and Anna's model questions.

Do Models Eat?

I, personally, eat, and thus far the industry representatives in New York have been very accomodating of this habit. In Paris for shows recently I was not so lucky; a man at my agency squeezed my love handles and dubbed me the "fat girl," and no amount of self-sacrifice (truthfully, I'm not that good at self-sacrifice) would make him stop. (If I lost five pounds, he'd tell me my "pants were flattering.") But as the great philosopher Gisele once pointed out, fashion is an industry dominated by people genetically predisposed to be lanky and skinny. Like most models, 90% of my work was done that fine day in the late '80s when my ectomorph parents melded chromosomes. I've always been "that girl who could eat whatever I wanted" — if it sounds horrendously unfair, consider the fact that I was constantly hungry growing up. Now that I'm old, I watch it a little more. But only a little. I butter my pasta. I consider chocolate mousse a sacrament.

As for everyone else, there are a lot of models who are quick with a restaurant recommendation, and I've witnessed many a meal disappear behind a lipglass'd pout. I also know firsthand that current Teen Vogue cover girl and rumored anorexic Karlie Kloss's passions include French fries — and yeah, if I was the subject of a vile anorexia rumor I'd be conspicuous about eating my fried foods also, but that is because I am not anorexic.

I don't keep track of my weight so much as my measurements. Fashion models are supposed to have bust/waist/hip stats of 34"/24"/34" or less, and you'd be crazy not to think that was an extremely thin standard. Girls with 34.5" or 35" hips aren't exactly rare, but certain clients (like, say, Balenciaga) like skinny models more than others. And this definitely takes its toll on a lot of girls. I had a roommate who used to send me weird text messages every afternoon detailing what she'd eaten that day; half the time it was a simple "omg i've only had a Starbucks hazel nut capicino haha i feel so good!" She also told me that apples are the ultimate diet snack and introduced me to the concept of the negative calorie food. I've been on jobs where the other models picked despondently at side salads and called that "lunch." And there are certain girls I do not know personally whose bony frames always make me do a sharp intake of breath. During Fashion Week, paradoxically, it's almost too hectic not to eat junk food. I will inhale street vendor hot dogs on foot, and I see plenty of girls cramming Snickers bars.

Are Eastern Bloc Preteenagers the only ones who get work?

Yes. Eastern Europeans and Brazilians. They are seriously 80% of the industry. And they are all 15 years old and six feet tall and hungry. Except the Poles, who are uniformly 15 years old, six feet tall, and extremely kindhearted.

Is it as tiring as they say?

The preweek hustle is insane. I had 12 castings and a fitting on my busiest day; an Australian girl I met that day had 24 appointments. (She made them all.) My model book weighs nine pounds and I can't really afford cabs. So yeah, that's tiring.

Once you get a job, the indignities are fairly minor. You could need to be on set pre-dawn, or stay there until the middle of the night, wear wool coats in the summer heat or frolic in swimsuits on wintery beaches while holding challenging poses — oh no! But there is an undercurrent of total depersonalization in a lot of the work, and that irks. In its least harmful form, you'll find yourself getting stuck with pins (doth not a model bleed...) and talked about as if you are not in the room or cognizant of anything happening. In its more harmful manifestations, you get situations like this week's Marc Bouwer show, where powerful stage lights over the runway actually caused burns to models' skin and eyes. Apparently nobody foresaw the danger, or thought to intervene.

Okay, but the money's pretty awesome, right?

I fucking wish! I'm in this for the travel and the experience. I grew up poring over mags like The Face and Nylon at the library; how could I not be thrilled to meet designers, and see their collections months before the public? The jobs you hear about are the hundred-grand photo campaigns for Victoria's Secret or million-dollar commercial shoot for a skin care line in Japan. But you can spend all day posing for one half-page photo in American Vogue and wind up, after agency commission, with fifty bucks. (Commission varies by city, from 20% in New York to 70% in Paris.) Fashion shows generally pay a handful of runway stars exorbitant rates, and give the rest of the workaday model pack a flat fee somewhere between $300 and $1,000. Plenty of the smaller shows will pay $100 plus some clothes. Probably the biggest brand to pay in trade is Alice + Olivia, which gives $500 worth of clothes to each of its models. Which is all well and good until you have to pay the heating bill.

Are models vain?

Very. It's practically homework for us to study ourselves in the mirror, trying to memorize our angles for incorporation into future poses. But I often think of something Margaret Atwood wrote about women, mirrors, and vanitas paintings in The Blind Assassin. She said Western culture tends to confuse vanity with the search for flaws. "What is it about me" can so easily be construed as "What is wrong with me?" And these days it's an obsession that plagues just about everyone.

Does everyone do mountains of coke or what?

I've never actually seen anyone do coke on the job. But yeah, I've been offered coke more times than I care to remember at parties. I've never actually indulged. Um.. does that make me a pussy?

Are Models Dumb?

It would be really easy to just quote a few quick examples to debunk this myth — models like molecular biology M.A. Sunniva, Eamonn, who has a law degree and has been accepted into Cambridge's art history program, fellow Cambridge acceptee Lily Cole, Estonian National chess team president Carmen Kass and genuine World-of-Warcraft computer geek Rachel Clark come to mind — but that would belie just exactly how annoying this particular stereotype can be.

Models aren't a particularly educated bunch. The industry does everything in its power to prevent you from completing high school, much less college — and a lot of girls, coming from abject poverty and whatnot, are complicit. But uneducated does not equal dumb. The amount of traveling alone that models must do tends to make them more curious, independent and emotionally intelligent than the average person you meet at a party. (The average person you meet at a party who assumes you are dumb because you are a model, arghhh) If I were dropped in an unfamiliar city and didn't speak the language, and had to make three appointments in different neighbourhoods, I'd want a model helping me figure out the public transportation, not an urban planning Ph.D.

That said, models definitely say awesomely dumb things sometimes. Like, a few weeks ago, one announced, apropos of nothing, "You know, models are in, like, the five percent of people who look like models."

Word.

Do a lot of models have, uh, a Naomi Campbell attitude?

This is going to disappoint you, but the atmosphere among models is almost always positive. Girls will ask to look at each other's portfolios, and I've gotten some of the sincerest compliments in my life from a charming 14-year-old Russian on her first trip outside the country. I was at a casting the recently with Ali Stephens, and I can report that in addition to having a comely Linda Evangelista-ish curve about her upper lip, she is both very sweet and funny.

Okay, so what is the worst part of the job?

Jumping in high heels sucks to a degree I cannot overstate. But I'm going to have to go with the hair. (I know, feel sorry for me please.) Hairdressers are downright sadists on some jobs. So many of those elaborate hairstyles you see in magazines and on runways Hurt. Like. Hell. Tight cornrow braids criss-crossing your scalp, instant-facelift ponytails, extra hair stuck on with a glue some lispy stylist swears will come right off in warm water (lies of this nature are not funny!), giant wiggly ziggurats of teased and pinned bouffant. Scratchy wigs placed over the hairspray-plastered turban of your own hair, held on by pins that dig into your scalp. I've seen it all. And I've experienced the burns from the tools required to achieve these looks, and had my own product-crud-encrusted hair yanked out in the dismantling process. I know a girl who worked Fashion Week in Japan, and she said she would never go back there. When I asked her why, she held out a hank of her hair for me to feel. She had the driest, brittlest, frizziest, most damaged hair I had ever seen and I am a model and we damage our hair for a living. She told me she'd been working up to four shows a day, and that at every show they'd just soak her scalp in chemical relaxant to remove the product from the show before. Folks, that's your first beauty Don't.

Of course, the seating arrangements are a headache unto themselves: "Editors from important publications are seated in the front two rows. Those from regional magazines and newspapers usually sit farther back. Buyers from the same retailer are positioned near each other but far from the competition. Care is taken not to give junior executives better seats than their bosses." The PR companies also send private cars for celebrities — knowing that if they do, the celeb has a higher chance of actually showing up. Alison Brod, of Alison Brod Public Relations, which handled the Rosa Chá show, admits that the shows "aren't hugely profitable," but raise the profile of the designer and the PR company. But if this whole thing seems like a lot of wasted time and effort, rest assured that some restraint was exercised:

The size and weight of the invitation required postage of 97 cents, but the $1 stamp had beige and maroon tones that clashed with the envelope. [Pam Morris, the 27-year-old account supervisor] thought three 41-cent stamps with brightly colored flowers would look better, but chose the $1 stamps because she couldn't justify the added cost.

A Fashion Show's Backstage Drama: Luring Celebrities to the Audience [WSJ]
Earlier: First Impressions: Rosa Cha Show "Kind Of Like A Joke From Zoolander"

Models at Chris Benz:

A model at John Varvatos:

Our "barf bag" girls, Dina & Levon:

The truth of Fashion Week is that it is PAINFUL speaking those truths over and over again to a bunch of people who are too wrapped up in their Coco Rocha sightings to get it through their heads that: Fashion is housework that was elevated somehow to "art" thanks only to the money that rich people are willing to fork out concealing the true extent of their vanity; and elevated to "commerce" worthy of a somewhat hyped seasonal trade show through the simple materialist dialectic that goes like this: If you build new wants, they will throw out last year's babydoll dress and shell out the Amex to buy them.

But if you accept these basic truths — and that you are powerless to do anything about them — you can soothe your remaining naive disillusionment at Fashion Week with one of those free drinks they serve you in exchange for your willingness to be a pawn in the complex demand-creation engine they have built and bask in the absurdity of some photographer — who isn't even on TV, or maybe he is, but who isn't these days — expecting you to know who the fuck he is. Look, they have wine, beer, champagne, bourbon, vodka, gin, even bitters! (To add a "healthy" splash to that vodka tonic consoling what ails you). Or you can do like other attendees, and soothe your disillusionment with:

Scarf (Custo)
Diamond Timex watch (eBay/Cynthia Rowley party)
Red BlackBerry Pearl, won at GenArt
$50 Lord & Taylor gift certificate (Rodarte)
Rodarte branded candle (Rodarte)
"Late Spring" Criterion Collection DVD (Rodarte)
Snoopy Sno Cone machine, book, journal, umbrella (Snoopy show)
Arrojo hair care products (Frank Tell)
Assouline book, Rumeur perfume (Lanvin lunch)
2 bottles of Izze fruit soda, 2-3 CDs, Skin care products (GenArt)

Dodai: I went into Fashion Week excited and hopeful, and came out on the other side exhausted, somewhat jaded and with foot pain. I also had PMS, but that's another story. All the registering, invitations and confirmations lead to a lot of standing in line waiting for the privilege to stand up while watch the runway shows. Many times I was given "standing room priority," which meant that I could be one of the first people to stand — and often lead to a seat. But generally I felt like I had to prove I supposed to be there, even while holding an invitation in my hand, even after Jennifer had informed me that I was "confirmed." Unless you're involved in Fashion Week, you may not realize that seeing a show is often 2 HOURS of frenzy for 15 minutes of show. It's like waiting in line for a rollercoaster. Most of the time there's a general sense that it's going to be fun — and worth it — but sometimes it definitely felt like much ado about nothing. I appreciate that for the designers and the PR houses, it's more like four MONTHS of work for 15 minutes of show, but as a person who was just trying to do her job — get into the show and report on what I saw — I felt judged, measured and ranked every step of the way, even at the parties. Part of this is just the beast of New York, but part of it is the "are you 'important' or not" attitude the majority of the people involved have. As far as the clothes go, I enjoyed them the most when they were fun (Baby Phat/KLS, Betsey Johnson). I was thankful that I had the pleasure of going to shows before every single model was skeletal. When I saw Naomi Campbell walk for Rosa Chá years ago, she was a vision of health and energy; strutting and prancing like a thoroughbred racehorse, superhuman. The models at the Rosa Cha show this year seemed bored and gray from nutrition deficiency. What I did love was having the room at The Algonquin — being able to step away from the hurricane of activity into a quiet space steeped in oak, Dorothy Parker quotes, and a "hotel cat." I felt like I was part of something bigger, as a woman writing in New York, and that made me happy. The Algonquin rules.

Jennie: With the right attitude, I think you can talk your way into most things. But, as fashion week proved, "I'm on the list" is a line that works way more often than it should. Not as often as I would've liked, mind you, but more than it should; enough to score me a spot backstage at Rodarte and Malandrino, which were two of the highlights of my week. Rodarte is thoughtful, artful fashion at its best: It's conceptual, but not unrecognizable. And I still can't stop talking about the marvel of sitting there and seeing dresses float by that look like they were made from clouds.

Another show that had me gaga was Chris Benz, genius up-and-comer extraordinaire. It was the perfect fusion of fashion as "fashion" (something artful, something rooted in ideas and narrative) and the practical: Working with the most recognizable of forms (slouchy pants, drop-waisted dresses, the loafer!), he dipped these everyday objects into the most explosive neon palette you could possibly imagine. The end result was breathtaking. I felt like Dorothy stepping into Technicolor for the very first time, but better! Because in my Oz, Benz's Oz, the munchkins were in fact models who were costumed as the bastard lovechildren of Annie Hall and Jay Gatsby. This is what fashion should be.

And Catherine Malandrino! She to me, much like Behnaz Sarafpour, has always embodied for me the essence of the smart chick. Malandrino clothes are all about being a woman: Not a small girl, but a hormone-raging, food-eating, emotion-feeling, boob-and-hips-clad woman. She is probably the only designer I can think of whose clothes look better on "real" people than on models. You gotta have a booty to wear her clothes — thank god! And her use of color was such a relief — so saturated and refreshing and alive — it reminded me why I love fashion. Unfortunately, the models on display at most of the shows reminded me why I don't always love fashion too: Everyone knows that models are thin, but it's not until you see them up close that you realize how shocking their bodies are. Uncostumed, they are terrifying; no one can see a model up close and aspire to that sort of physical form.

It's shocking, we know, but some people take Fashion Week really, really seriously. Designers shudder and quake in anticipation as the world's top "fashion journalists" pull out their best and most pretentious purple prose reviewing the Spring/Summer 2008 collections. In our final primer on what the major critics" have to say about the shows at New York Fashion Week, we've got Zac Posen, Heatherette, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, and Betsey Johnson. First up, red-carpet favorite Zac Posen drops a touch of 'Little House on the Prairie' onto the runway.

"lacks...restraint", "inspired by Pilgrims, Amish, Mennonites and Shaker", "restraint was positively mandatory", "at his best with his day wear", "flirtatious white ruffles", "expressed a sweet exuberance" — Robin Givhan, Washington Post

"unlikely inspirations", "big-sky romance", "a softness that his more overtly sexy work lacks", "strayed into dangerous pastures", "as poufy as storm-whipped clouds", "more than a little showy", "a country no-no" — Nicole Phelps, Style.com

"vaguely safari", "smart, modern and controlled", "a lack of restraint is his biggest problem", "his greatest indulgence is the big, splashy finish", "more like the twilight zone" —WWD

"short and sweet", "endearing youthfulness", "wheat sheaves shaped as crystal brooches", "rural spirit", "puffy with volume", "thoughtful" — Suzy Menkes, International Herald Tribune

"evoked the wheat fields of the Great Plains", "dramatic beauty of the wind-tossed, open sky", "hand-painted and shadow-dyed", "bold and dramatic as a thunder-clap", "shot with lightning shafts of colour and extravagant shapes" — Hilary Alexander, Daily Telegraph

Heatherette
"fun", "surefire", "the models look like wayward brides in a sort of backward couture show", "big red-white-and-blue dose of Americana", "picnic-table print", "Wearable? Sure, a little" — Meenal Mistry, Style.com

"send-up of the U.S. of A.", "delightful high-energy romp", "wasn't all over-the-top camp", "their share of wacky red, white and blue getups", "some chic - and no less whimsical".— WWD

Donna Karan
"classy halter and shirt-dresses", "waist was the focus", "flattering", "recalled... women airing themselves on their stoops on a hot summer night, usually within sight of a man in an undershirt" — Cathy Horyn, NY Times

"women as urban warriors", "had the feel of an urban princess", "more comfortable in a garden setting than surrounded by the city's concrete and steel" — Robin Givhan, Washington Post

"worked both sides of the structure/flow divide", "portrait collars", "crisp, breezy", "confident sensuality", "the silhouette was lean and languid or full", "arabesques of silk ribbon" — Nicole Phelps, Style.com

Betsey Johnson
"petticoated party dresses dashed with decorations like sprinkles on a cupcake", "sequins, hearts, laces, and lamé", "deliberate act of indulgence", "huge crinolines", "Empire waists and daisies". — Laird Borrelli-Persson, Style.com

"cacophony of tulle", "no one does a party dress like Johnson", "sparkly", "polkadots and stripes galore", "pink-and-yellow paisley playsuits", 'downright patriotic", "modern-day sailor jumpsuits", "frocks didn't seem to vary much style-wise". — WWD

Calvin Klein
"a job well done", "will gain more meaning with time", "breezy", "egg-wash shades", "the hemlines of the dresses might have been better shorter", "all the models in the show were white", "seems out of touch" — Cathy Horyn, NY Times

"equivalent of a sexy whisper", "austere", "unforgiving fabrics", "faintest gray shadings", "sensuous drape", "its strength was in the purity of the design" — Robin Givhan, Washington Post

"spare, clean canvas", "wasn't enough", "quiet repetitiveness", "minimalist in the style of old-school Calvin" — Nicole Phelps, Style.com

"shimmer of silk", "subtle shades of sea and river water", "exceptional", "succeeded in reigniting minimalism", "modern and relevant" — Suzy Menkes, International Herald Tribune

We shop at Forever 21, so maybe we're not the best judges of what's new, fresh, of-the-moment (and other 'Lucky'-isms) in fashion. We have a few Marc Jacobs items, but they were on clearance at Century 21 and probably from five years ago, so that's why we've let the critics speak about the fashion darling's show the other night — you know, the one that started two hours late, and pissed off a bunch of people, including 'Vogue' editor Anna Wintour.

"...expressed perfectly the dislocating values of our culture", "an antidote to the cartoonish Jessica Rabbit sexuality", "stripped-down dresses to break the hold of flagrant sexiness", "erotic", "respectful of women", "beautiful, as well as realistic", "deal openly and imaginatively with sexuality without exploiting it". — Cathy Horyn, NY Times

"...could have used a little more time", "on their own, individual elements... were very attractive", "wearable clothes wasn't the point here", "clothes appropriate for warmer weather", "color-blocking, sheer overlays, sequins", "nude and natural colors with bright pops" — Samantha Critchell, Washington Post

"Extraordinary", "off-kilter and knock-your-socks-off", "a bonkers surrealist streak", "transparency was a key theme", "Gimmicky? You bet. But also fascinating", "gawky and awkward", "provocative", "sublime performance was about sex", "couldn't look away" — Nicole Phelps, Style.com

"a pseudo-Surrealist stab at fashion", "too-big shoes, raw seams, ugly juxtapositions of table-cloth plastic and metallic lace in virulent hues", "unfinished, underwear-exposing", "the height of designer-label luxury", "failed to impress" — Hilary Alexander, Daily Telegraph

"not his strongest, but still, it was great", "a succession of mad hair, mad shoes, kooky glasses and zany clothes", "all wasted, batty church secretary in 1953", "rejoices...in the weird and wonderful moments that make dressing unique" — Amy Larocca, NY Mag

"fairy-tale farce", "inventive layerings", "brilliantly fantastical", "will dazzle all as brightly in their retail incarnations", "haute florals and adorable animalia", "hussy sheers", "a delightfully costumed experimental sexcapade". — WWD

Earlier: Marc Jacobs Channels 'Grey Gardens'? We Beg To Differ
WaPo Fashion Critic Robin Givhan's Dog Molests Shoes; Marc Jacobs Is To Blame

[Images via AP]

Earlier: Retro Fashion: Edie Beale On The "Best Costume For The Day"