Front Row Circus

This is a give-and-take relationship. The front row is played up by the designers themselves who have always used glamour and celebrities to upscale their image. The celeb-hungry paps may often forget which designer is showing, but well remember the faces in the front row. The designer must then ensure that his upfront socialite guests are wearing his clothes, and so freebies are unabashedly handed out.

Of course, you cannot rule out the occasional trauma of being spotted in an identical outfit as someone else (if you are patronising the designer). In 1991, at Oscar de la Renta’s SS ’92 show at the Hotel Pierre in New York, Ivana Trump was sitting in the front row in a black-and-white plaid Oscar suit, waiting for the show to start. In walked another New York socialite, wearing the same Oscar suit. The two stared at each other in horror for a split second, before the NY socialite made a hasty exit from the show and never returned!

And then should you be so unlucky: be showered in a hail of debris from a collapsing false ceiling (à la Michael Kors), or have a mild heart-attack when glitter bombs go off at your feet, dust off your curls and keep smiling.

The three main players for the seating scramble here are the designers who, with their publicists, do the seating. The next are the stars, socialites and rich patrons who usually occupy the best seats and threaten a mini crisis if they don’t. Lastly, the photographers, who have to exhibit military precision to fight the crush of each other, contort their bodies at will into yogic positions and click their images in the split second available to them.

The poor designer’s work isn’t done yet. After designing an entire collection, planning the show, organising fittings and being harassed for passes by his publicist, he still has to attend to the pecking order of seating. ‘‘Miss so-and-so has rung and said she is NOT attending if she is not in the front row.’’ ‘‘Mrs B has three girlfriends here and wants them to be seated with her in the front.’’ Starlets, industrialists, divas, buyers—how do you keep everyone happy?

In my quest to juggle all of the above, I once inventively planned a ramp that ran 100 m long, which meant an elongated front row. It was still a nightmare; I needed 40 extra models and the show lost all its energy.

As for the socialites and stars, sure they want to see the show, but what they’d love is to have their pics splashed in papers. It is important where you are seated, who you are next to and what you are wearing. Even if it’s your ninth show of the week.

You may find this funny, but being a front row queen is a serious profession, one that can tire you. There is this pretty social queen from the Delhi circuit who, by the end of the fourth day of a recent fashion week, looked like she had personally designed and supervised most of the collections.

The media is another story. Fine fashion was originally the purview of the aristocracy and the rich, who understood the nuances of the fine line. Over the last century, the social order turned on its head with a new moneyed clan that understood the logo but not the finesse, where ‘masstige’ defined ‘masses’ and ‘prestige’ and torn clothes became a fad from the inner cities.

Celebrity is the new aristocracy. And with the burgeoning number of magazines, tabloids and channels, celeb stalkers increase. Sadly, a show or designer is judged by whose bottoms warmed their front row more than the calibre of the clothes put out. Most photographers, and even writers, cannot tell one silhouette from another.

Now there is a new tribe of the truly chic who will call up and whisper that they do understand. That they only come to see the clothes and are happier not being photographed by Page 3 media. This almost invisible tribe of truly chic fashionistas is small, very small. But I thank god for them.