Interview

My favorite person to sit with in the front row is Glenda Bailey the editor of Harpers Bazaar. Glenda is cool and funny and every time they come near us with a camera she says "Oh...Glenn and Glenda!" Kanye West is at every show.  There's a buzz about it. "Why is he at every show?" Ask writers and editors. He's doing a clothing line, some theorize. But then designers don't go to other shows. He's doing research? A concept album perhaps. "The Front Row?"  At any rate I know that some of the buyers and beat writers were pleased when Mr. West was seated in the second row at Comme des Garcons, and his lady friend in the third. Nothing personal, I think, but they felt that their years of suffering for their job was somehow validated. (GLENN O'BRIEN AT MCQUEEN. PHOTO: GREG KRESSLER/STYLE.COM)

But let me tell you this, you people out there in public relations land, put Glenn O'Brien in the second row and you won't be seeing him at your show! Ever! You and your has-been designer will be like the Westin Palace, a fading memory on a dim horizon, waiting for the wrecker's ball or the redecorator's estimate because I know the blogs will feel that I have somehow slipped down the totem pole. And I'm a top not a bottom.

What else?  Well the models don't seem so skinny this season. Either they've weeded out the extreme anorexics or they died. There's a lot of see-through and sexy stuff this season, and though models are still way on the slim side you do see some nice booty out there and some actually curvaceous legs and nipples galore! One of the gals in the Margiela show, a real beauty, has early signs of cellulite. (You go girl!) And Pam Anderson walked in Vivienne Westwood's show, shaking that thang. And that thang. And that one too. Boomchakalakalaka. Also I see signs of a modeling revival.

I mean those girls are getting up there and modeling those clothes. No more marching androids with a lippizaner step, they swivel hips, turn, dip, and pull out moves from Eileen Ford class of '64. It's hot. The hottest models this season are the redheads. Coco Rocha, please somebody give her a movie before she boils over. And Vlada. Well, she's just the best runway model out there. She's so fierce.  She's got that witchy red hair and those ice blue Aryan eyes and that steely straight ahead demeanor, shoulders held back so far you don't know why she doesn't fall over backward.  She's dry ice, man, so cold she's hot.

I have also been digging the music a lot more this season, trying to name that tune and iTunes it when I get back to my rooms. There has been a lotof heavy machinery music.  It was all over New York.  If you've every had an MRI or been abducted by aliens then you probably know all about this sound. Sometimes the music is truly terrible. I find in my notebook for the Brioni show, "shoot the DJ!" But lately I've been hearing more fun and more funk. Allesandro DellAqua played "Love Is a Battlefield." Dolce and Gabbana rocked the house with U2's "The Future Needs a Big Kiss." Issey Miyake had the excellent taste to work Swayze's  excellent "High Together," "If you got the weed I got the pipe..."

I'm seeing lots of healthy trends on the catwalks.  Everybody started out this season talking about the economy, gloom and doom and black clothes-but in fact there has been a lot of joy on the runway. If you're feeling depressed  or recessed there's nothing like an utterly irrelevant excess to lift you up. The very irrelevance of it all is actually super relevant. More on this to come.