The End of Fashion Week as We Know It: Wailing Outside Lauren Conrad, the Dead Ferret Con and Other Scenes From L.A.'s Last Smashbox Catwalks

With IMG and Smashbox parting ways, L.A. Fashion Week's Culver City era comes to a close

Comments (0) By Gendy Alimurung Wednesday, Oct 22 2008

Just another example: At the concluding “Green Initiative” eco-themed event, where barefoot models tread the runway in silky bamboo dresses, with live animals even — a wolf, an albino python, a monkey — and designers speak earnestly of reducing carbon footprints and saving the planet, there in the audience I spot dead-ferret girl bopping one stiletto-clad foot to the African tribal music. Go figure.

And yes, Fashion Week tests your morals. Are you the type who will cut in line in front of 300 people to get into a show? Do you laugh when a model stumbles? If you are starving — and 99 percent of the people here are — do you steal an unguarded delicious-smelling burrito clearly meant for one of the hard-working volunteers? Do you sneer at a tall, thin and otherwise beautiful girl’s butt cellulite? On these matters, I have come up alternately virtuous and wanting.

Ted Soqui

Conrad

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There’s talk that next year, Fashion Week will be more like a trade show. Or that it won’t happen at all. Or that it will be spread out into lots of tiny, disparate venues. The Factor boys seem to be talking up Hollywood while snubbing downtown — perhaps leaving that territory to the BOXeight crowd? In any case, it’s hard to imagine that many of this year’s hard-learned lessons will matter next time. We start from scratch, everything new, the rules changed. And this isn’t a bad place for it, Los Angeles and reinvention.