Simon Doonan says men’s fashion enjoying “midget moment”
In perhaps the only Fashion Week coverage that matters, Simon Doonan hit the fall shows for Band of Outsiders, Rag & Bone, and Thom Browne, and proclaimed in his New York Observer column that “as a vertically challenged person, I couldn’t be happier”:
The truth of the matter is that fashion is having a midget moment. Our time has come. Since I am petite, and trendy men’s wear designers like Scotty [of BOO] are now cutting their clothes for shriveled heroin addicts with no internal organs, there is now more merch for me to buy than ever before. Tiny is the size du jour. An edgy shrunken jacket becomes, on my torso, a serviceably hip sport coat. Superskinny rocker pants? On my legs they become a nifty narrow trouser. When things were blousy and boxy—remember when Karl Lagerfeld was tubby and he always wore those Comme Des Garcons suits?—I was shit out of luck. Now, thanks to the new anorexia chic of the 21st century, I’m drowning in options. Choices! Choices! Choices! I am like a kid in a candy store.
Trademark wit aside, Doonan speaks with authority here (being both 5-foot-4.5 and the creative director at Barneys NY, credentials of equal weight, surely), expanding on a point I’ve mentioned previously on this site. Thanks to Thom Browne and the current shift toward downsized duds, times are good for the half-pint. So buy now. The glass may be half empty. As Doonan asks: “If tiny goes out of fashion, what the hell am I going to wear?”