Jim Carrey Vh1 Fashion Awards 1997

To innovate the Rolling Stones at the VH1 Fashion Awards Oct. 24 at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, the comic thespian Jim Carrey wore a fig leafage and nothing else on bunny-pinkish skin.

"This is where way began," said Mr. Carrey, conveying a red apple with a big bite taken out of it, his delivery characteristically mocking and stentorian. "This fig leaf and forbidden-fruit ensemble dares to say: banish me."

Feigning wickedness, Mick Jagger responded: "I want to swallow his fig leaf."

Whatsoever.

Mr. Carrey's appearance seemed to gibe the fashion-besotted oversupply, only his costume was a reminder that there is a difference between wearable and fashion. Fashion, as Mr. Carrey seems to have learned recently, is elaborate and complicated. One doesn't merely throw on whatsoever old fig leaf. Far from information technology. Mr. Carrey himself conceived his costume and, in planning his appearance, he sketched a fig leaf and faxed information technology to VH1'south offices in New York. His design was sent to a local tailor for structure; the basis of it was a Yard-string bought on Christopher Street. The final creation was delivered to Mr. Carrey at the St. Regis hotel, where he and/or his people decided the fig leafage was besides small-scale. The tailor was called to add an inch all around to Mr. Carrey's costume moments before show time.

Much ado about a little bit of nothing, but that's fashion. There's always much ado. If it were easy, style wouldn't be so consuming. So, of course, the advent of fashion week in New York, beginning Saturday, Nov. one, when designers present their spring 1998 collections, is loaded already with snags and puckers. This twelvemonth, the plot turns mostly on the relocation of 7th on 6th, the offshoot of the Council of Way Designers of America that, since 1993, has organized the shows under tents at Bryant Park and in office building lobbies nearby, to the Pier 59 Studios and Chelsea Piers. In the weeks leading up to way week, there seems to be a concentrated anxiety on the part of those who flock to these gatherings over the infinite at the piers and over the fact that many designers have decided not to show there.

The decision of 7th on Sixth to relocate was made when the organizers learned concluding summertime they might not be able to rent several of the spaces they used for shows on West 40th Street. The board of Seventh on Sixth met at the piers, a location scouted by Fern Mallis, executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America and 7th on Sixth, and Stan Herman, president of the organizations. "Nosotros wondered if we should attempt to observe a new place or but stop bothering. Allow the designers discover their ain spaces. Simply, somehow, standing with 7th on Sixth seemed an important mission, the all-time way to help brand certain American designers hold their own in the global fashion economy," Ms. Mallis explained during a bout of the piers recently.

"Our board signed off on the piers for two years. Calvin Klein, Bill Blass, Joseph Abboud were at that place when nosotros met. Richard Tyler was on the phone from L.A. Donna Karan was on the phone from God knows where." Merely those board members generally are designers who take of belatedly shown at locations away from the organized event, and Seventh on Sixth was unable to persuade them to modify their minds. In fact, during any given fashion week, half of the shows never took identify at the Bryant Park tents, including Marc Jacobs' show, always a favorite ticket. Mr. Jacobs never did the tents and isn't showing at the piers. "I'm not interested in showing in a identify where anybody else shows," the designer said not long agone.

"I just wish people would write their reviews later they encounter how information technology works," Ms. Mallis said as workmen rushed by.

Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan retreated from the Bryant Park tents in April 1996; Calvin Klein followed the next flavor. Mr. Lauren and Ms. Karan similar to present their collections in their showrooms at 650 Madison Avenue and 550 Seventh Avenue, respectively. Mr. Klein, afterward two seasons at the Dia Center for the Arts, is showing in a warehouse space he's leased yr-circular on West 15th Street. For the designers who maintain such commodious and arguably intimate spaces, information technology makes sense to use them for shows.

"It'southward much easier to look at the apparel and to sympathise the fabrics. I love it in Ralph and Donna's showroom when you lot can actually get to meet the clothes," Harper's Bazaar editor in chief Liz Tilberis said during a recent conversation. "We've been seeing huge shows for nearly 20 years. Sometimes, small is amend. When I meet a runway up high, I find it a lilliputian too austere."

Then the fashion devotees will find themselves all over town during fashion week. Isaac Mizrahi appear Oct. 24 that he will bear witness at a location near Wall Street on November. half-dozen. Carolina Herrera, Ellen Tracy, Todd Oldham, Pamela Dennis, and Randolph Duke for Halston volition show in a gallery space on 24th Street near tenth Avenue arranged by their producer, Kevin Krier, who only pulled off a much-admired Gucci evidence in Milan.

"Your signposts at the piers are bowling alleys and a golf class. It seemed so far away from the chic elements of Manhattan," Mr. Krier explained. "Our space feels like it is on the right side of the tracks."

Meanwhile, Oscar de la Renta and his neighbour in northwestern Connecticut, Bill Blass, will nowadays their collections at the New-York Historical Club, where their pal Betsy Gotbaum is president. Good luck. Last flavour, Randolph Duke's debut evidence for the Halston drove was held at the historical gild. When the show was tardily, the crowd got hungry. They pushed and a colleague of mine lost his footing and tripped. A guard, thinking said colleague was trying to pull his seat ahead of the residue, slugged the man in his chest.

There are swell expectations for British designer Rifat Ozbek and the render of Stephen Sprouse. Helmut Lang'south SoHo boutique is scheduled to open at fourscore Greene Street on Nov. 4. On November. 5, Boy George volition disk at the reopening of Bulgari's 5th Avenue shop. Last but not least are all the activities surrounding the Whitney Museum's tribute to Andy Warhol, a 500-slice exhibition called The Warhol Await: Glamour Mode Mode . Wendy Goldberg and Anne Fuchs are co-chairing the opening dinner at the museum on Nov. 6. An extensive "Fashion and Picture show" serial will run concurrent with the Warhol testify. Some 50 features, documentaries and short subjects chose by Matthew Yokobosky, an associate curator at the Whitney, will be on view until Jan. 11.

Barneys will get in the act when Simon Doonan, using the photographs of Roxanne Lowitt, creates tableaux in the windows of the Madison Avenue store to celebrate the Warhol evidence.

"Warhol is very timely," Mr. Doonan said recently, "specially as way struggles to perfect the uptown-downtown mix that was such an important function of Andy's message."

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