Exactly why do people goto high-brow fashion shows? I’ve never seen a real woman wear anything remotley resembling the stuff models parade in. As far as I can tell its just press for a designer, who sells cookie-cutter overpriced clothes that look nothing like his/her runway designs to major outlets.
I think you just travel in the wrong circles. I assume that the people who attend fashion shows are wholesalers and retailers (buyers, actually) of a very exclusive sort, and that there is a relatively small group of very rich women who do indeed buy this stuff and actually wear it. (To events that you and I, obviously, were not invited.)
I saw a “fashion show” on television once. I couldn’t help but notice how slim and attractive the models were. Too bad more women don’t make an effort.
(my apologies to Viz comics letters to the editor section for joke stealing.)
Fashion models don’t wear any underclothes either. No wonder they look so nice 
The shows are important so you can see what the next fashion craze is.
It also depends on the fashion show. Many shows ('least the ones that make the news) aren’t so much intended to tell us what the average Jane will be wearing to the office, but rather are much like art galleries exhibits; designers showing off what they can come up with. I sincerely doubt anyone really expects women to go to the local Safeway in a dress made of compact discs or a black vinyl number that sports motorcycles handlebars off the breasts, but these people fasion is their artistic medium. It also gets their name out so when you see their “safer” designs at the upper-class stores, you know who the person is, that they are famous, and hopefully will buy their clothing.
Al Zheimers said:
“Too bad more women don’t make an effort?” Great. You’ve just managed to insult 99.9% of the women out there. sigh
I consider the women in fashion shows to be unnaturally skinny, distressingly snobby, and not particularly attractive. But I realise that, beyond my own personal preferences in women, much of that is probably due to the models’ fitting themselves to clothing designers’ idealised images.
And yes, I’m aware that there is a breed of designers who design clothing for “real” (i.e. non-skinny) women.
Some time, take a look at how mainstream fashion designers actually draw their clothes and models. The proportions are very different than those of real people: the legs are unnaturally long, the head is often smaller, and the feet and hands are tiny. In a way, fashion drawing echoes the artistic stylisation of Japanese anime or of Western superhero comics.
Unfortunately, it is then the job of the poor model to physically fit herself to those proportions.
My friends and I always go.
It’s a major fundraiser for our club.
We raise mostly money from each other, and the models come as cheap entertainment arranged through Macy’s of California.
They always have some things you couldn’t wear if you were a perfect 2, and others for day, evening, business and the blue-haired with a walker set.
I’m sure they do well off of it, and we have an excuse to dress up ourselves without buying concert tickets.
There’s always a dessert buffet table and lots of conversation afterwards. Some people I only know from these events, so it’s good to catch up.
Sunspace, you hear that sound, right over your head? That’s a joke going WHOOOOOOOOOOSH! If you’d bothered to keep reading for two more lines you would’ve seen:
“Unfortunately, it is then the job of the poor model to physically fit herself to those proportions.”
“Poor model”? Thousands of dollars for a few hours strutting around in funny clothes? I’ll take their job.
pldennison: It wasn’t entirely clear that that was a joke.
I know too many people, both men and women, who believe that they are ugly and dislike themselves because they don’t match other peoples’ ideas of what is ‘attractive’. They compare themselves to the images provided by the fashion shows and magazines, and believe themselves inferior. One of my friends has come close to suicide because of this.
I also know a very successful clothing designer who does not subscribe to the common predjudice favouring skinny women, and gets a lot of business because of it.
I do not apologise for my strong feelings about these things.
To give my take on the original question, though… I’ve always thought that fashion shows were the clothing-design industry’s version of concept-car shows: each designer says, this is what we are capable of.