Walking mannequins

I don't think I've ever done a catwalk related post before and I'm not about to start. I do enjoy seeing the beautiful clothes but I've never been able to suffer the endless stream of photos of show, after show, after show.... clicking away on style.com until the most beautiful dress doesn't even raise a flicker of excitement.

But when I saw the pictures of the Margiela show in one of those daily free London papers, I stopped. Of course, it is sensationalist, you just have to look at how many normally fashion-dead papers have covered this show. There's also the whole enigmatic element since Martin Margiela never has his photo taken. Nevertheless, I found the idea of making models look like faceless mannequins a fascinating idea. People always argue that the reason models are so skinny is so that the clothes hang as they would on a mannequin; there are no curves to manipulate the garment or detract attention from it. Normally I poo-poo this idea; why do they then choose startingly beautiful and ofter amazonian looking uber-models? Why not actually use robotic mannequins?





Still, if this was Margiela's intention, it didn't exactly work, with the creepy looking models getting more press coverage than the actual collection.