Memo to Hedi: We hear you - hell, we even salute you for trying to berate our repellently corrosive celebrity culture - but don't get all holier-than-thou over something you essentially practice as much as the next designer. Sigh...

For once - just once - a story has provoked in us, not outrage nor total agreement, moreover a seemingly unheard of case of total ambivalence. Yes, people, we are on the fence: for once we can see both sides. Former Dior Homme honcho, Hedi Slimane (AKA the individual single handedly responsible for the sharp spike in male eating disorders) has been shooting his mouth off about celebrities wearing designer clothes, branding red carpet fashion "cheap."

"The unfortunate outcome [of blogging and social networking] might be the obsession and collusion between the celebrity culture and high fashion.It is just a big global mess of random endorsement. Nothing looks worse than a dress or a suit on a red carpet.

It is an ongoing tragedy of cheap fashion on cheap celebrities, followed by ubercheap comments. I only like designers’ clothes on models. Good models have an inner understanding of the clothes and design."

Naturally talking smack about our oh-so-beloved 'sleb culture has caused a big stink (cue cries of "how dare he??" and "who does he think actually buys his clothes??") but seriously - and not just to play devils advocate, we totally get where he's coming from. C'mon he knows it's the affluent older (read: porkier) types rather than the scraggy hipless, teens that slunk down his runways that bankrolled his wage-packet. What we think Hedi's getting at is how cynically willing label's have become to be celeb's bedfellow's, forsaking credibility, integrity and the brand's soul/aesthetic for a brief moment on the back of some D-lister at a premiere.

That said, Hedi's whole argument is kinda made null and void by the fact he spent most of his Dior years sartorially butt-fucking Pete Doherty (along with whoever the hip young indie upstart was at the time) so to get all morally superior on our asses is sanctimonious at best and unequivocally hypocritical at worst.

Posted on March 23, 2011 at 5:10:54 by The Real Runway