March 3, 2005

"We wanted something intimate, and we listen to Tori Amos when we're alone."

Fashion designer Rolf Snoeren explains his inspiration:
The headlines in Thursday's papers will be "Pillow Talk" or "The Big Sleep," and there will be sniggers at the breakfast table when people catch a glimpse of a model in a red duvet dress with a fat white pillow tucked behind her head. The Viktor & Rolf show, at the ancient Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, was something. Beautiful in its dreamy use of white cotton shirts with eyelet ruffles, and highly conceptual in its evocation of the bed as the center of family life, Viktor Horsting's and Rolf Snoeren's show was an ode to love, with Tori Amos at the piano.

"We wanted something intimate, and we listen to Tori Amos when we're alone," Mr. Snoeren explained. "All good things happen in bed."

And Tori herself plays at the fashion show. Tori lovers should not miss the beautiful picture at that last link of Tori flailing her crimped orange hair about. She's wearing something big, magenta, and liquid. Ah, but avert your eyes from the text Tori lovers. Tori loathers: there's plenty here for you to savor:
Naturally, given the Lawrence Welk tendencies of [Viktor & Rolf], the live music for their show yesterday was provided by Tori Amos, the pop music klaxon.

Held in a space where what passes for experimental theater is usually staged, the production had as its centerpiece a black grand piano played by Ms. Amos, a stiff and stately piece of furniture herself. Her long hennaed hair was arranged in pre-Raphaelite crimps, and she wore quilted red trousers and a red satin blouse.

After greeting the audience with deep Kabuki bows, Ms. Amos took to the keyboard and began banging on it and keening as the English kewpie-doll mannequin Lily Cole appeared wearing quilted trousers and with satin pillows strapped behind her head like a weird Elizabethan ruff.
Red? The blouse sure looks magenta to me! In aesthetics, it's all subjective, I suppose. But no: that blouse isn't red!

Klaxon? Being a lawprof, I hear "Klaxon" and think of the Erie doctrine, but the definition I'm picking up from the dictionary is "A trademark used for a loud electric horn." So presumably, the writer (Guy Trebay) means to say that Tori clashed with the "Lawrence Welk" tone of the designers? And the designers are wrong that Tori is intimate?

"All good things happen in bed"? Then why are we at this damned fashion show? Maybe that aphorism makes more sense to a person whose name is -- it looks -- pronounced "snorin'."

Fashion is a strange other world.

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