The Asylum (14 page)

BACK IN THE 1950S,
stylish girls would do anything to achieve that rail-thin, society-bitch, Babe Paley silhouette. It wasn't enough to torture your innards into a long-line girdle, you also needed a little helper, or, more specifically, a tapeworm. This was the midcentury version of a gastric bypass. You were nobody unless you had your own live-in parasite.

If you think this is grotesque, then hang on to your gizzards. There is stuff going on today which makes all that tapeworm swallowing of yesteryear seem positively cutesy. The history of fashion and food, and the relationship between the two, is both fascinating and disturbing. Every decade I have observed new foodie fads and disorders arrive on the scene, searing the gorges and scraping the bowels of every fashion person in their path, and every decade things get more insane . . .

Let's get the gnarliest trend out of the way first. I am not going to sugarcoat it for you. I am just going to come right out and say it: There are fashionable people walking among us who are
drinking their own urine
. There, I've said it.

Unsurprisingly, this particular fad first reared its head in the late sixties when hippies spent their spare time sitting in orgone
*
boxes, drilling holes in one another's heads—it's called trepanning—and swallowing extremely long rags, all at the insistence of their hollow-eyed yogis. It was an all-bets-are-off era of consciousness-raising, experimentation and, yes, urine drinking.

The goal of drinking your own pee? Mental clarity, spiritual and physical well-being and, last but not least, beauty. Among the notables who gave it a whirl was J. D. Salinger. You could say he liked to take the piss out of himself.

The great hippie revival started at the end of the twentieth century and continues today. Caftans, communes, organic food co-ops, greenmarkets and music festivals all came back into vogue, and so did . . . gulp . . . urine drinking. Convinced of the health and beauty benefits of this transgressive activity, style mavens began enthusiastically partaking of their own piddle on a daily basis.

I became fascinated by the return of this taboo-busting practice. In a desperate attempt to understand the phenomenon, I sought out and interviewed several fashionable guzzlers. I wanted to get inside their heads, if not their bladders.

“I'm a devotee,” a magazine editor told me on condition of the strictest anonymity, “and I never get colds. My Japanese uncle taught me how to get the best results, but it's not the subject of dinner-party chat. It's between me and my pee.”

“It's healing and cleansing and, yes, I think it's really catching on,” said a fashion consultant and stylist. “If you do drugs or booze, you can taste it the next day. I'm very careful about who I tell. If word got out, I could never show my face at the Four Seasons again.”

Others were more out and proud.

“What's the big deal?” said New York–based photographer Johnny Rozsa. “Urine therapy has been around for so long and the benefits are so well documented. I'm not a golden-shower queen: I started doing it to help my psoriasis. During that period, I noticed my skin was like a baby's bottom—a clean one, I might add. People think of piss as dirty, they associate it with poop. What I've discovered, along with many others—including Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri—is the pure magic of pee. It's mostly urea, which has so many gorgeous properties!”

Mr. Rozsa grudgingly admitted that “the whole thing is a bit of a palaver,” adding, “You see, you have to drink the middle pee when you wake up.”

Middle pee?

“You pee out the first bit, then clench, then pee into a glass, clench again and pee the rest down the toilet. I add apple juice to the ‘middle' urine and gulp it down.”

After encountering all these rabidly pro-urine opinions, I started to wonder why I was not giving it a whirl.

Fortunately, just in the nick of time, I happened upon a balanced assessment of urine drinking written by a bloke named Robert Todd Carroll. He lays out the pros and cons in a straightforward manner, ultimately labeling it a fairly harmless practice. Pee is, after all, 95 percent water; the rest is nitrogenous waste from the liver, including a few excess minerals and nutrients that might get absorbed if you gave them a second chance. His conclusion? “As a daily tonic, there are much tastier ways to introduce healthful products into one's bloodstream.” Mr. Carroll does, however, highly recommend drinking pee “for those rare occasions when one is buried beneath a building or lost at sea for a week or two.”

Less cringe making than urine drinking, but no less incomprehensible, is the new mania for eating raw. Yes, fashion folk are hanging up their pots and pans for good. The raw-food trend is, even as I write, sweeping the alimentary canals of the modishly spiritual.

The original hippies were always much too busy skipping through the glades of Golden Gate Park to be bothered with elaborate culinary preparations. It was inevitable that they would go raw. As with urine drinking, the revival of all things counterculture has triggered fresh interest in the whole notion of
not cooking
.

I was made aware of the raw-food revival by my old pal designer John Bartlett. He adopted this diet after a trip to the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Patagonia, Arizona, where he'd gone to do battle with what he called his “toxic mucus buildup.”

“It accumulates in our intestines and colon, and then diseases get trapped,” explained John, adding, “So I went there to eat raw and cleanse myself completely.”

The raw-food rage, as practiced by John, has two basic rules: First, eat a vegan (nothing from an animal) diet, and, second, never turn on the stove. Cooking is evil because it destroys the food's enzymes. Et voilà! A raw cucumber lasagna! Bon appétit!

Mr. Bartlett denies any candy-bar lapses. He does, however, enjoy a few quick puffs on an American Spirit, the preferred cigarette of the fashion woo-woo set.

Stylish American Spiritualists are often to be seen lighting up—and hacking up toxic mucus—outside Quintessence, a restaurant on East Tenth Street. With an additional catering service in Manhattan, the Quintessence mini-empire is the epicenter of the New York raw lifestyle.

Upon Mr. Bartlett's recommendation, I spent an evening at the Tenth Street location and quizzed the regulars to find out what, other than a fear of disease-laden mucus, was behind this bizarre trend.

“It's such a big movement—
literally
!” chuckled fashion consultant Robert Forrest, while chewing on a Quintessence sun burger. “Delicious. It's made from sunflowers and flax seeds and other stuff,” raved the healthy-looking sixtyish executive. “I never travel without them.”

While most diners shared Mr. Forrest's positive feelings about their meal, a few neophytes could be heard losing patience as they waited for their food.

“If it's all raw, then what's taking so long?” kvetched one rag & bone–clad female, not unreasonably.

“The chef is massaging your kale. Yes, boiling would be quicker, but it kills all the enzymes,” chirped the waitress.

All this talk of kale massaging gave me a sense of urgency. I had no intention of waiting until the wee hours while the chef harangued my snap peas into edibility. Time to order.

The menu consisted mostly of ingenious quote-swaddled facsimiles of regular cooked meals (e.g., “pasta” and “shrimp wonton”). I ordered the “burrito” and found it light and quite bearable, if a little heavy on the avocado.

For dessert, I tucked into Mr. Bartlett's favorite dessert, a “mudslide.” This strange triple-decker fantasia consisted of pecan, carob, dates, mesquite powder, coconut and—hello, again!—avocado.

I fired probing questions at the now replete Mr. Forrest about the specific benefits of the diet. He mumbled something about “releasing toxins,” ordered a couple of sun burgers to go for his upcoming trip to Dubai and left.

What's it all about, alfalfa? Why are fashion people so fixated on toxins and the vanquishing thereof? Is it a metaphor for self-loathing or just a passing fad?

I scrutinized the menu for clues and found the following screed: “We believe that by eating uncooked food long enough, we will regain the fifth element and the mystical powers of our ancestors.”

I resolved to cut through the mucus once and for all and get the real story. I called the Quintessence HQ. I tracked down one of the three owners, a Chinese lady who goes by the
Lord of the Rings
–ish name of Tolentin Chan. Miss Chan was less than keen to talk about that “fifth element” or her ancestral mystical powers. She was, however, a lot clearer about the overall benefits of raw food than some of her Seventh Avenue clients.

“I ate a standard American diet, and my health was terrible,” said Tolentin, who in her pre-raw days suffered from asthma, thyroid problems and continuous colds. “Starch and dairy had coated my lungs with mucus.”

Now, thanks to raw food, Tolentin enjoys an asthma-free life. Her health issues now are stress-related: running a restaurant without the profit margins from liquor sales is working her nerves. Why no booze?

“Alcohol creates yeast, so we can't sell it. We are not making a lot of money, but it's okay. My motive is to share my knowledge about enzymes.”

Enzymes?

“A high-enzyme diet will rejuvenate the body, energize you and make you feel like a newborn.” According to Tolentin, aging is synonymous with a reduction in metabolic and digestive enzymes. Raw food replaces these enzymes.

Suddenly, I realized why the fashion flock has embraced the raw lifestyle.
Mucus, schmucus!
Toxins schmoxins!
It's all about vanity. The raw craze is nothing more than a smoke screen for that age-old quest for eternal youth.

Now I remembered something John Bartlett said regarding his Arizona retreat. “The guy who runs this place is sixty and looks thirty-five!” No wonder Alicia Silverstone and the
Playboy
Barbi Twins have gone raw!

•   •   •

WITHIN THE FASHION ASYLUM,
foodie fads come and go faster than a chicken vindaloo flies through a senior citizen. Urine guzzling and raw food are now waning in popularity. They have been eclipsed by a sinister, plaguelike phenomenon.

I'll never forget the first time I saw one of those freaky, sinister, dark green
things
. It was sitting on somebody's desk in the Barneys corporate office. And then the next day I saw another one and another. It was like
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
. Every time we had a meeting, more of these mysterious objects would appear.

“It's a mixture of seaweed, plankton, wheatgrass and vitamins.”

“But you seem to be drinking nothing else.”

“It takes seven days. I'm on a cleanse.”

“Why? What's it supposed to do?”

“I'm getting rid of all my toxins.”

(Here we go again!)

“What's a toxin?”

“I'm not sure . . .”

“You look great.”

“I've lost seven pounds. My goal weight is 105 pounds.”

“You will look like a cadaver.”

“Hopefully, soon.”

The fashion world has embraced “the cleanse” with a vengeance. Here, finally, is a socially acceptable way to ensure that you get all your vitamins and minerals while maintaining the terrifyingly low body weight of a Ukrainian fashion model. And, as if that isn't fabulous enough, you will also be ridding yourself of all those toxins, whatever the hell they are.

Gradually the cleanse has proliferated—kombucha, mandrake, aardvark spittle, celery, kumquat and aloe—and the absence of a sludge-filled bottle is now more noteworthy than its presence. It is important to note, however, that the cleanse has yet to achieve global acceptance. There are wicked toxic holdouts and some really naughty pockets of resistance.

A couple of years back . . .

Julie Gilhart, the former fashion director of Barneys, and I had scheduled a lunch meeting with three female execs from the House of Lanvin who were in town from Paris to discuss plans for Alber Elbaz's tenth anniversary as designer for the house.

Julie was stuck in traffic so the girls and I went ahead and ordered.

“Steak frites.”

“Moi aussi.”

“Make zat trois.”

Françoise, Solange and Brigitte all ordered the fattiest thing on the menu, and I chose a lesbian lentil salad.

Françoise, Solange and Brigitte rolled their eyes at my healthy choice and then ordered a vat of
vin rouge
to wash down their steak frites.

Julie arrived in a flurry of air kissing and apologies. She sat down, rummaged in her Balenciaga bag and pulled out—you guessed it!—a plastic bottle containing what looked like green bile.

“Qu'est-ce que c'est?”
whispered Françoise.

Waving away the menu politely, Julie announced that she was “on a cleanse” and would not be eating. She unscrewed the top of her lichen-and-beet-and-bergamot bowel purge, or some such thing, and began slugging it back.

“Pourquoi?”
asked Solange.

“I need to release my toxins.”

The three Frogs looked at one another.

“Les américaines, elles sont vraiment folles, non?”
opined Brigitte, and forked a juicy slice of steak into her
bouche
.

Conclusion: As insanely specific as foodie fads and disorders are within the fashion universe, there are important regional differences. Yanks are terrified of toxins. Frogs thrive on them. And Brigitte, Françoise and Solange all lit up as soon as we hit the sidewalk.

A MAS
H-UP OF GENDER-CONFUSED
fascist lesbianism. A shrunken preppy jacket with an armpit-scraping, high-waisted pant. Howdy Doody taken to his complete and utter lunatic conclusion. Visconti's
The Damned
meets Pasolini's
Salo
. Lacroix meets von Trapp. Liberace meets Hitler. Gilbert & George meet Ross Perot. White mink stoles, calf-length skirts, marcel-waved hair, fur-trimmed capes, cashmere stockings and Swarovski-encrusted attaché cases . . . and that's just the men.

The above are some random notes I took while watching a recent Thom Browne menswear show.

How did Thom happen? How did he become the most influential menswear designer of the 2000s while simultaneously being the most unbridled and avant-garde and totally fucking crazy?

During the eighties, and most of the nineties, men's designer clothing was huge. And by huge, I do mean capacious, tentlike, flowing, ample. If you were a trendy dude who wandered into Maxfield, Barneys or Charivari, then you saw immediately that cocoons and capes and general bagginess were where it was at. If a guy wanted a black Yohji highwayman's cloak, a billowing Versace scarf-print silk shirt or a black boxy boiled-wool Comme des Garçons suit—those voluminous CDG suits were Karl Lagerfeld's preferred uniform before he dropped major poundage on that cornbread diet—he could have his pick.

The basic assumption was as follows: Designer clothes are expensive. Rich dudes tend to be well-fed and beefy. Et voilà! Blouson is the mot du jour!

If, on the other hand, you were freakishly undersized, or just poor and petite, then you were shit out of luck.

I am one of those freakishly undersized personages. As a result, that baggy eighties Bananarama blousy period was, for me, a very emotionally scarring one. Being surrounded by designer clothing and not fitting into any of it was an alienating and horrific experience. Once in a while I would give it a whirl. I would try on a Montana this or an Armani that. The result? I was so swamped by fabric that I was invariably mistaken for an oven mitt. People would pick me up, stuff their hands inside me and slam me upside their pot roasts.

My point is this: The oversized ethos only worked on dudes of average or above-average height. So what
did
I wear?

Back then, back before LiLo and Kim and Perez and Al-Qaeda and Brangelina and Real Housewifery, there was no Zara or Uniqlo or H&M. There was no affordable fashion in teensy sizes. But my drive toward self-adornment was powerful. I found a way to survive: vintage clothing.

I came to know every good second-hand store in New York City, Miami Beach and Los Angeles. I sussed out the emporiums that always carried a meaty selection of unworn dead stock or secondhand merch and came away with armfuls of well-priced trouvays. The clothing manufacturers of the fifties, sixties and seventies were fully committed, back before the arrival of all that baggy blousonerie, to a niftier, narrower silhouette.

Before long, I became a rigorous vintage connoisseur. I could spot a moldy green armpit at fifty paces. I knew how to check seams for lice. And I would still be checking for skid marks and buying vintage if it were not for one man. His name is Thom Browne. With his shrunken ethos, Thom put the “dinky” back in designer clothing.

If you kidnapped Thom Browne from his home in New York City and plonked him down outside a convenience store in Kentucky, people would assume that he had escaped from the local mental health facility. His personal style is so codified and perversely conservative that it would definitely freak out the locals; with his high-waisted, flat-front pants; shrunken jackets; oversize pant cuffs cropped to expose several inches of ankle and hairy shinbone; and massive, cartoonish wing tips, Thom manages to simultaneously embody and destroy every menswear convention. His vision for men combines and magnifies various twentieth-century archetypes: the sixties congressman, the prewar Ivy Leaguer, Bobby Kennedy, Mr. Rogers and more.

Despite the objective weirdness of the TB look, it has been hugely influential. It is
the
influence. You cannot walk into a store today without seeing traces of Browne: ventriloquist-dummy-size jackets, a cardigan with a contrasting arm stripe, a painfully narrow tie, a center-vented gray wool jacket with a grosgrain ribbon trim.

When I happen to see Thom sitting in a restaurant or walking down the street, all Thom'd up, I usually think,
That's either Thom Browne or it's a very stylish and handsome Jehovah's Witness
. Thom is, in many ways, both. He creates and proselytizes the Browne look with a missionary zeal. He is a bloke with a vision and, unlike certain designers I could name who never seem to wear their own clothes—you know who you are!—he lives and breathes his own sartorial philosophy. His conviction and passion are what have propelled him into the spotlight. The courageous exaggerations of the Browne style, the polar opposite of the floppy draperie that dominated menswear for so long, have made him the most relentlessly copied menswear name to come along in years. He understood that the plump baby boomers and the eighties muscle dudes were aging out of their designer fixation, making way for a new generation of scrawny manorexics. A wave of hipster postgrunge freaks had arrived and they have no desire to look even remotely like an oven mitt. Their fashion icon was Spud from
Trainspotting.

I don't do the supershort Thom Browne pant—my legs are short enough already—but I am nonetheless one of his acolytes. He has given me a way to look both tidy and eccentric. And—cue the trumpets and heavenly choirs—that quirky shrunken-jacket silhouette is, on my freakishly undersized body, a perfect fit. It looks
normal
! Praise the Lord!

And what of the man himself? Who is the dude behind the grosgrain?

A one-man performance troupe, Mr. Browne eats at the same restaurants at the same time every day. I have no idea why. Despite having had many conversations with Thom, I have no idea what makes him tick, what it is like to
be
Thom and wander the streets with chilly ankles. He is well mannered but remote. This old-school reserve has only added to the enigma. Thom Browne the unknowable.

The depths of Thom's unknowability are confirmed every time he stages a fashion show. These occasions are dominated by outrageously unwearable concoctions—ballooning skirts, squishy cod pieces and linebacker shoulders—which challenge all of our preconceived notions about fashion. Men in terrorist masks and quasibridal frocks wander around rooms filled with turquoise wedding cakes. Chicks with giant silver egg-shaped thingys on their heads reposition themselves like giant chess pieces. What does it all mean? No explanatory notes are provided. Whether promoting men's clothing or women's, these arty, protracted, incomprehensible and thoroughly enjoyable affairs never reveal anything about this particular season's concept or about the man himself.

I love to watch the facial expressions of the show attendees. Without the benefit of explanatory insights into Thom's MO, the audience is suspended in a state of mild discomfort. Should we cheer? Are we allowed to laugh? Are these clothes for sale? Watching the mugs of the front-rowers at a recent show, I suddenly became aware that I had seen this particular expression somewhere before. It's the same embarrassed-but-slightly-concerned face I have seen on my neighbor's fluffy cat as she executes a poo in her litter box.

Of one thing I am certain, Thom is extremely anal-retentive about the production of his shows. Rehearsals continue until everything is just so. I base this observation on the fact that Thom once kept the sobbing, bare-legged fashion pack waiting al fresco for half an hour in Arctic temperatures. Our tears were turning to icicles as we begged for mercy and pantomimed hypothermia to the PR flacks with clipboards who were observing our slow death with uncaring gazes through a frosty window. “Thom needs one more run-through,” said a gray-clad acolyte and rebolted the door.

Last Christmas I walked into Il Cantinori, one of Thom's regular New York eateries. Near the window was a long table with sixteen gray-suited look-alikes eating pasta. Yes, it was the Thom Browne corporate staff holiday outing. TB himself was at the head of the table.

Out-of-towners were riveted.

“What's with the Hutterites, or whatever the fuck they are?” asked one well-lubricated diner.

“The Branch Davidians are in the house!” slurred another.

Thom just smiled and ate his pasta.