Among the surprises at the VH1 music cable network announcement of its Dec. 3 fashion awards program was the video it showed to open its news conference.
It actually made fashion look exciting.With a drizzle flowing off the Bryant Park tents and an audience so jaded it would make the cynical actor George Sanders look perky, it takes an awful lot to thrill the fashion pack these days.
A policeman patrolling outside the tents muttered "seen one show, you seen them all." Even the policemen are suffering from fashion fatigue.
But the VH1 promotional spot had it all: En Vogue stalking the runway singing "Free Your Mind"; George Michael's video with Thierry Mugler's craziest clothes; John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever," telling his father not to hit his hair; Audrey Hepburn getting her makeover in "Funny Face"; Right Said Fred satirizing runway models, and even Walt Disney's "Cinderella."
Oh, that's why people love this business. It had almost slipped everyone's minds.
As in most start-up awards programs, there is a something-for-everyone quality to those chosen this time around, with designer nominees for the Catwalk to Sidewalk Award ("designers whose designs are most easily embraced by the man/woman on the street") including Tommy Hilfiger, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Helmut Lang, Isaac Mizrahi, Todd Oldham and Anna Sui. Designer-of-the-year nominees are John Galliano, Klein, Lang and Miuccia Prada.
The American house left out is the one that is the most Americana-oriented of them all, Ralph Lauren.
In the flashing VH1 video's references, however, there was much of Lauren's approach to fashion. No one can touch the emotional nerves Lauren can, and when it comes to the Proustian images and memories we have of fashion past, Lauren is the king.
Be it heroes, from Gene Kelly to Joan of Arc, or sepia-toned visions of idyllic worlds, be they Provence 1930 or Rome 1960, or Olympian sports gear, Lauren has it all, waiting like the toy soldier from "The Nutcracker" in a box to be brought out by the designer-as-magician to entertain his invitees.
There was no magic this season, however. Lauren produced an efficient, emotionless trade show, in the old Seventh Avenue style.
While the fits of the military-cut jackets, cropped ones with hidden buttons, and windowpane-plaid collared suits were better than ever, these were not clothes to dream of. Even Lauren's Academy Award gowns, so winsome and wishful last season, were in colors right out of a Crayola box, more suitable for jogging suits than gowns.
But the show was commercially inclusive, shirtdresses in a range of colors, suits in a range of fabrics, just the way the buyers will purchase them for every department store in town. There was some invention in a group of scuba-inspired dresses in neon colors with black, worn with cool sunglasses and tank watches.
Yet, what was disappointing was that of all Lauren's cinematic fantasies, the one that is most compelling right now is his real-life story. New York fashion, sportswear - and country-club style, even - is what the whole world is copying, and Lauren helped to invent it.
This is, after mod moments and grunge moments and punk moments, a Ralph Lauren moment. Much like Yves Saint Laurent, when he was being revived, canonized and copied by fashion designers everywhere, Lauren may not have recognized this as his time. Perhaps no designer can.
The second most interesting omission in the VH1 nominees for this year was that of Patrick Robinson from the list for "outstanding new designer of 1995." The nominees are Victor Alfaro, Tom Ford for Gucci, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Miuccia Prada. True, not all are spring chickens, but each has defined a style of his or her own.
Robinson may have too many dictates at Anne Klein to ever be able to break into that elite pack. There is clearly some Platonic form of middle-age, middle-class, middle-brow woman who is the muse for the company, but one cannot help wondering if that woman hasn't been mythologized a little too much.
Robinson's frustrations are painfully obvious. His perfectly wearable nice pantsuits were shown for the most part with no shirts beneath, an attempt to spice things up. He wanted to get away with a more provocative hemline, so he called the miniskirt size that Richard Tyler was chastised for when he was the Anne Klein designer a "tennis skirt."
In fact, there were many elements here that felt like those from Tyler's shows for Anne Klein that so displeased its owners: the trim pinstripe suits, the keyhole knit dresses, the belted shirt-dresses. And it all looked fine.
Will Ms. Middle America like them any more than she liked Tyler's efforts? It seems an undue burden on a young designer who is clearly capable of making more of a mark. What would really help is if Robinson could further shed his commercial very Giorgio Armani-derived color palette. When he did, he produced the prettiest clothes of the show: sweet ruffled dresses in marzipan hues.