Suffering for the Art of Fashion

Walking the catwalk isn’t a walk in the park – especially if you are working for visionaries like McQueen.  Here is an excerpt from Justine Picardie’s book ‘My Mother’s Wedding Dress – The Life and Afterlife of Clothes’ where she recounts two tales of catwalk torture as told to her by the model Erin O’Connor. 

Firstly, her memory of appearing on the catwalk in London for Alexander McQueen’s spring/summer 2001 collection: a show that was much admired for its creative depiction of a ‘fashion asylum’; or in Erin’s words, ‘the lunatic show’, in which the models had white bandaged heads.  In it, she wore a white dress made out of razor shells – all of them collected by McQueen himself, from a Norfolk beach – that had taken weeks, if not months, to make.  ‘And he told just before I stepped out there that he wanted me to go really mad – that he wanted me to rip off the dress on stage.  And I said "Are you sure?"  Because it’s a beautiful dress, and he kind of gets carried away, and it’s all pandemonium – and he shouts, "Yeah! Just do it!"  So off I go, I rip the dress, but the razor shells rip up my hands, as well.  Afterwards, I go backstage, for sympathy, saying, "Look, my hands are really bleeding.  Has anyone got any antiseptic wipes?" And the hair and make-up people say, "Oh, MAJOR! Wipe your hands all over your bandage, it’ll look great, because your next dress is blood-red." So that’s what I ended up doing – no one had any antiseptic, and I didn’t have anywhere else to put my bleeding hands…’

It only gets worse….

A second lesson in the art of suffering for her beauty came at a more recent Paris catwalk show: ‘We all learned, very quickly, that you can’t put on a thirteen-inch corset and wear thirteen-inch platform stilettos, with an enormous hooped skirt…. And I had the biggest dress, right at the end of the show – the finale piece – and I couldn’t handle it, I just wasn’t tough enough physically.’

Erin didn’t faint, she explained: "though I’d fainted the season before, when I came off the stage.  But this time, I was feeling very ill.  And actually, I couldn’t faint and fall on the floor, because of the outfit – it was like wearing a balloon, and I had a metal waistband that was about half an inch thick, around me, supporting the hoops…. Can you imagine, a thirteen-inch waist, and you’re bearing the weight of another corset on top, in platform shoes so high that you can’t feel your feet when you step?  Every time I took a step, I was falling forwards… I couldn’t have imagined the horror of it all, it was a nightmare.’

While she was backstage, waiting to go on, other models were falling on the catwalk; but in the end, the firement who were on duty backstage prevented her from making her entrance.  ‘They said , "Non, finis."  They pointed out that my arms and legs had gone all blue…. And the next day, when I got up, I had lots of bruises on my legs – not from where I’d been hitting into things, but little blood veins had popped, all over.’

Despite these horrific tales, Erin stills shrugs it off by saying ‘It’s my job.’ 

I don’t envy her position one bit……