care nothing for high, medium, or low fashion, and doubt I would even if I had the money to afford any of it. I do enjoy fashion show photos, though, on several levels. The beautiful models are nice, and the clothing is absurdly amusing that there's never even a faint possibility you'll ever see it or anything like it worn in real life. Thus fashion shows are basically just art shows with models wearing the art and frequently exposing a boobie in the process.

Blog entries about photos from various art shows are collected on this page, with more recent additions on top.

Fall is the season for fashion shows.  Why?  I have no idea, but they always seem to do them in late September, just as it's growing cold and most people are thinking about wearing sensible winter clothing, mostly comprised of jeans, sweaters, and layering.

That's not what high fashion designers are thinking about, though.  They've spent their summers stitching away on simply sumptuous creations and like the proverbial caterpillar, now is the time when they shed their cocoons and emerge, glorious wings spread for all to see.  Or at least to slap on a bunch of overpriced model hide and sent down the runway.

The following photos are collected from various fashion show slideshows as seen on Yahoo, and if you're a stranger to high fashion shows and expect to see something that you might ever envision a living human wearing, you should try and get over it quickly.  Fashion shows exist in an entirely insular universe, one with many parallels to the fields of independent film making and literary journals.  In such areas, the entire point is to impress your peers, who are the only people so thoroughly indoctrinated that they can 1) appreciate your work, and 2) be trusted not to point out that the emperor has no clothes, metaphorically speaking.  Any hint of popular appeal or mass commercialism are traits to be avoided at all costs.

The only real mystery is why so many people pay attention to high fashion shows, while no one (other than other misfits in the field) gives a shit about artsy independent films or artsy literature. Well, on second thought that's no real mystery at all, when you take a look at the sort of presentation high fashion gets. If you had nearly naked supermodels strutting about while movies about gay cowboys eating pudding were screened, or had bare boobies on display while a six-foot blonde from Sweden red a novella about some navel-gazer's tortured childhood at the hands of his imaginary absinthe-swilling father and his invisible pack of corpulent hogs, I suppose there would be quite a bit more press coverage of those art forms as well.

As for the photo, it gets worse as you move upwards.  Nice mini > absurd top that looks like a dog bed with a hole cut into it > Groucho Marks meets eyeblack googles?

No one had a lint brush backstage?

A model walks the runway during the Antonio Ortega show during Toronto Fashion Week in Toronto, Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2003. (AP PHOTO/Aaron Harris)

This shot seems hopelessly out of place. It's a gorgeous model with reasonable hair, nice make up, and she's wearing four (visible) garments that a living human female might actually wear, at some point in her life.  True, no one would ever wear them all at once, at least not without an added blouse, but it's almost unsettling to find this somewhat realistic outfit swimming in the sea of absurdly avant-garde crap you'll never see anywhere other than on a fashion show runway.

A model walks the runway during the Chris Hewson show during Toronto Fashion Week in Toronto, Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2003. (AP PHOTO/Aaron Harris)

After that brush with reality, it's nice to get back to the fashion show staple; clothing that has no foreseeable use or commercial viability whatsoever.

A model walks the runway during the Daina Grigenas show during Toronto Fashion Week in Toronto, Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2003. (AP PHOTO/Aaron Harris)

She's a quick application of an unconvincing forehead prosthesis away from passing as a Romulan ambassador on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

A model wears a design from Hamish Morrow's collection for Spring/Summer 2004 at London Fashion Week, September 23, 2003. REUTERS/Peter Macdiarmid

I like a skinny girl as much as, if not more than, the next guy.  But when I see this picture... ewww!  Someone get her a double bacon cheeseburger and some curly fries, stat!

A model displays a pink bikini created by designer Angel Schlesser during the Spring/Summer 2004 Pasarela Cibeles fashion week in Madrid September 23, 2003. The Pasarela Cibeles will run until September 26. REUTERS/Sergio Perez

The funniest part for me is that whenever they show the actual designers, they are always wearing something they appeared to have stolen from a thrift store. I suppose that, more than anything, is a sign of the actual real world utility of their high fashions. 

British designers Sadie Frost, right and Jemima French during their show for London Fashion Week in London, late Monday, Sept. 22, 2003. The designers are showing their Spring/Summer 2004 collections. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

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