Fashion

Clothes for Melancholy Librarians and Paris Hilton Impersonators

Natalie Reid, a Paris Hilton impersonator

Olympus Fashion Week has a bevy of sponsors, and the sponsors want to give the attendees stuff. On Saturday afternoon, Aquafina water, Peroni pilsner, and the not-at-all-bad Effen vodka got a warm reception, but a number of beefy boys in UPS outfits were having a hard time moving individually wrapped brownies. Carbohydrates? Here? UPS should be advised to restrict itself to putting its name on the Bryant Park venue where “up-and-coming designers” hold their shows.

That would be the narrow little “UPS Hub,” where, at noon, Sabyasachi Mukherjee made his Fashion Week debut with a collection seemingly intended for librarians in want of a funky way to express their melancholy. Kurt Cobain wailed his apologies on the loudspeakers as the models, all of them four-eyed, slouched around; their silhouettes split the difference between graceful and dowdy. At 4, UPS delivered unto us a young man who calls himself Texerov. His dresses were, at first glance, clean and elegant, and, at second glance, rather forgettable.

Alexandre Herchcovitch—who, having already come up, showed in “The Tent”—sent out his girls in glasses, too, but these were aviator shades, frequently complemented by tilted naval caps. To envisage the outfits themselves, continue with the military theme and imagine a battlefield blur: A Ndebele tribe is trying to repulse an invading horde of indie rockers by blinding them with screaming yellows and deafening reds. Herchcovitch’s constituency is goofy-haired downtown scenesters; Leigh Lezark, a DJ currently managing the neat trick of being simultaneously underground and overexposed, sat disaffectedly in her front-row seat.

At 5 p.m., one mile downtown and several leagues down market, Anand Jon showed his Jeanisis collection at the Metropolitan Pavilion. Perhaps you will get an idea of the quality of the designs if I tell you that notable guests included the incorrigible party crasher known as Shaggy and—his name escapes me—this bespectacled black guy who’s spent the past decade wearing a tricorn pirate hat to any media event that will have him. The star of this front row was Natalie Reid, the world’s foremost Paris Hilton impersonator. Her handler was a snide young fellow with asymmetrical bangs in front of his powdered face. When Jon had relented in parading denim and fuchsia, I attached myself to the pair.

 “I loved the collection,” Reid said, “I think he’s very innovative.”

“What was your favorite outfit?” I asked.

“What was my favorite outfit?” Reid asked Snooty Handler, who deigned to mutter something about gold embroidery and then made a valiant attempt to get Reid backstage.