From horror show on runway to wearable fashion on streets...

Since flying back from the summer trip to Asia, I've been so busy catching up on everything, including kids starting school, work and all, I can barely find time to even think of my journal, even though I have so much on my mind that I wish I could just do a brain-dump of them all.

So, these past few days, I read a few fashion-related articles, which have addressed some of my long-standing questions or feelings in general, one way or another.

One of the article is on a fashion column whose columnist obviously glows over Vera Wang, in particular, her latest runway show and collection, with pictures of a couple of runway clothes to boot. Not that I think Vera Wang's designs are all bad. Quite far from it, I see designs from her, from time to time, which looks very cute and pretty. But, by jove, how big a disconnect between fashion columnists (and their big opinions), and their readers; likewise to a fashion industry's near-obsession to use models that can only be described as death becomes her, and the loud, larger-than-life clothing that is totally unwearable, and the market audience's loathe of it. The article best illustrates these disconnects, particularly in the near-universal refute of how horrid-looking the clothing and models are, as expressed by almost all the readers' comments to the article.

So, there goes one of those things that has stayed at the back of my mind, and now I know I'm not alone in seeing how hateful the audience feels, towards all these supposedly contributions from the fashion industry.

But then, how does it justify the fashion industry going so strong, year after year, with runway shows still a yearly mainstay?

The second mystery was quite neatly addressed by another article I read, which illustrates how a seemingly outrageous runway design of a Donna Karan shirt is transformed from runway to become store-salable merchandise for everyday women. It's indeed a quite fascinating read for me, since I'm not in the industry, and obviously have no inkling of what goes on behind the scene to try to relate the runway to our fashion on sidewalk. For that, it shows how extravagant or exaggerating details of the runway design are trimmed, modified, eliminated or replaced, in order to make it a wearable clothing for an average woman.

All those are good to know for me, because I've come to loathe this whole fashion industry which is nothing but narcissistic to me. I've come to wonder how many designers it would take to translate those outrageous clothings from the likes of Marc Jacob or Jean-Paul Gaultier, into something that we can wear. But what more curiously is, at which point has this whole fashion industry moved out of steps from the classic designs of Chanel, in which every woman would dream of having "that exact same dress on the runway," into something on the runway in which we can really relate to? At what point has these runway fashion shows become just a show?