Come Again?

In today's paper, there was a wire-service article by one Godfrey Deeny, of Fashion Wire Daily, about Fashion Long-Weekend in Riga, Latvia. Mr. Deeny had this to say about one designer's show:

...her collection was marred with some absurdly garish makeup and frankly weird models. The idea...is that the girls should look beautiful, not just bizarre.

That's irony, right? The fashion writer is being ironic? 'Cause, y'know, "not just bizarre"? Does he realise what he just implied? Still, though, if a fashionista is calling it "absurd," "garish," "weird," and "bizarre," you know things are getting strange. Except, you know, they weren't. Not compared to what you see in New York, Paris, and Milan. Really, not even compared to what you see in high school (or, at least, what I saw in high school). What other evidence do we need of the cognitive disconnect between the fashion world and the real world?

Then, "girls should look beautiful"? For some reason, that sounds like a defense of a girl-fetish. There's something creepy about an industry that finds it sexier to speak of "girls" instead of "women."

The comments seem to undermine any claim to pure æstheticism that fashionistas might claim (I would be surprised if none have). If it's art, then attractiveness is (supposedly) irrelevant. But if you are concerned about appeal, then it's not art, it's design; and in that case, the æsthtic...um...excesses, shall we say, of New York, Paris, and Milan really shouldn't be celebrated.