If you`ve ever wondered how some fashion stars are made, or unmade, kick off your platform shoes and heed this season`s telling tale of the dubious debut of Victor Alfaro.
It`s probably true that most fashion stars are found, not born. The trick to getting them ”discovered,” savvy publicists know, is to hide them in plain sight.
It starts with a buzz of hype, which in Victor`s case started strong and early-aided by a blitz of show-touting phone calls, made by a once-influential former retail executive apparently to everyone he ever knew.
He pushed all of fashion`s favorite buttons. It was exotic: Victor is Mexican. It was intriguing: no one had ever heard of him. It was obscure: the show was in a murky hall in a scruffy location. It was glamorous: the supermodels would be there, including Linda Evangelista, who had shunned most other, all more prominent, shows.
By Monday, the first day of the collections, people were buzzing about Victor. By Tuesday, they were reading that people were buzzing about Victor in The New York Times.
That did it. The insatiable fashion crowd, ever hungry for the next Romeo Gigli-who first showed in a remote Milan garage-and ever fearful that they will pass up the mystery collection that turns out to be the best thing since sliced bread, snapped at the bait.
Like a convoy of big-game hunters, all the big-name retailers and press safaried down to the wilds of the East Village, their arriving caravan of limos, hired cars and taxis creating a frenzy that only heightened the hype.
It was time for Victor, a 28-year-old from Chihuahua, to stand and deliver. Despite a promising start with fluffy, plaid mohair coats in fiesta colors, what Victor basically delivered amounted to the tartiest collection seen this side of the Rio Grande.
In his sex-shop version of the season`s trends, Victor thinks it`s a great idea to wear snakeskin jeans that zip, or ”zeep” as he put it in his program, around the crotch from the belly button to the backside. In a menswear mood, Victor strongly believes in chalk-striped stretch wool
”chaps,” with cut-out crotch and rear. And, Victor thinks women look wonderful with their chests strapped into bondage-style, black leather
”harness belts”; he thoughtfully provides rhinestone models for evening.
The show left some guests fuming and others sweating. But in the end, all those ”zeeps” added up to, well, a professional zip.
The fashion faithful got Alfaro`s message and sent one back: ”Hasta la vista, baby.”