From left, Paul Julius, the bassist for the Montreal band Bionic; Les George Lenigrad, a band known for its post-punk sound; Timothy Dwyer from Bionic; and a member of the Unicorns

Cold Fusion: Montreal's Explosive Music Scene

By DAVID CARR

ONTREAL

THE search for the next big thing frequently ends up in small places. Hidebound by cloying commercial radio and clueless record executives, the American pop music scene has frequently depended on cities at the edges of the cultural map to provide a much-needed shot of originality. Seattle, Minneapolis, Austin, Tex., and Athens, Ga., have all served as temporary pivot points, churning out bands and defining the sound of the moment. Even Omaha had its 15 minutes not so long ago. The momentary consensus seems to come out of nowhere - as if someone blows a whistle only those in the know can hear, and suddenly record executives and journalists are crawling all over what had previously been an obscure locale.

So which American city is the next stop on this fickle, itinerant history? It's a trick question for the time being, because the answer seems to be Montreal.

Not French Montreal, either: the next big pop movement will not involve accordions accompanied by crooning chanteuses. This one involves a coven of English speakers who have banded together up and down Boulevard St. Laurent in the Mile End neighborhood, filling lofts, community centers, bars and restaurants with sumptuous noise. Montreal, which leaves serious business to Toronto and revels its a work-to-live ethic, has drawn Anglophone from all over Canada to form bands, record labels and a full-blown scene.

The French speakers may own the town - they are a 60 percent majority - but English-speaking bands are the ones being heard beyond the city limits. Locked out for the most part by Quebec radio and television, at least a dozen Montreal acts are reversing the normal United States-Canadian cultural polarity, producing records that have American audiences and record companies paying rapt attention. The band Arcade Fire stormed into American consciousness last year with a grand, swelling, choir-inflected sound. Their transnational incursion has been accompanied by the catchy lyricism of Sam Roberts, the oddball pop of the Unicorns and the romantic goth-pop of the Dears, along with a host of other local bands. Vice magazine, a foul-mouthed, hilarious Montreal-bred phenomenon, is now in Brooklyn with a record label that includes hometown acts like the Stills and Chromeo. Toss in the more mainstream success of Simple Plan - about two million units sold - you can hear music with a Montreal address on any radio in America.

The city shares a few key elements with temporary-musical-capital predecessors like Austin and Seattle. Being the biggest destination in a region almost guarantees an influx of musically inclined, disaffected young people to both play in and listen to bands. Bad weather helps, because it keeps songwriters inside and bands rehearsing. And perhaps most important, a nascent musical scene requires lots of cheap real estate for musicians and their fans to hang out and play in.

But in Montreal, those durable elements of musical invention are accompanied by a surprising political twist. Ten years ago, Anglophone-oriented money, people and resources pulled out - much of it for Toronto - leaving vacant buildings and a simmering conflict between the French and English speakers of Montreal. The threat of secession was supposed to end Anglophone viability in a majority French culture.

Instead, it seems to have led to an artistic regenesis. Minority groups working against a dominant culture have created lots of great music - think of Jim Crow America or apartheid-era South Africa. But unlike those groups, Anglophones aren't so much oppressed as irritated by their inability to get booked in local clubs or played on Quebec radio. In the lexicon of high school cliques, the French speakers, who are bilingual whenever they want to be, are the cool kids. Anglophones are outsiders as a matter of course, always promising to work on their French, but mostly finding succor and affinity among other English-only speakers, who compose seven percent of the population of the city.

At the same time, Montreal's vaguely socialist and communitarian politics, along with the city's reputation for hedonism, has produced off-the-grid parties in lofts and musician-run clubs, and plenty of opportunities for new and challenging music to find an audience. On an absolutely frigid recent Tuesday - a quiet night in the quietest time of year - three no-name bands were creating a racket at the recently opened Le Divan Orange, en Anglais, merci. Hundreds of fans jammed their puffy coats in various corners. Even though Canadian liquor stores were on strike and the cigarette packs featured vivid portraits of diseased lungs, people were consuming both like recently escaped convicts. The bands shouted into the din, and the audience - mostly - listened. Dan Seligman, creative director of Pop Montreal, a four-year-old festival, suggested it was just another night in the city that cannot get enough of its musicians. "We are a minority within a minority in Quebec," he said. "Living inside a French bubble, the music is very important to the kids here."

Despite its countercultural vibe, Montreal's Anglophone music explosion enjoys government support. Through an agency called Factor - the Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent on Records - the government finances demos, videos and tours. Government-sponsored rock may sound like an oxymoron, but the Dears, the Stars and the Unicorns have applied for and received Factor funds. That kind of protective oversight, oddly juxtaposed with a punk rock, do-it-yourself ethic, makes Montreal a nice place for a young person with a guitar to land.

In fact, most of the city's rock clubs on the Plateau, a historically immigrant neighborhood north of Sherbrooke, are filled with the work of artists - the tax credit given to gallery space does not hurt - and many of the people who play bass or spin records also paint. "The Plateau is a little breeding ground," said Gene Pendon, a founder of the Heavyweight Art Installation, an artistic collaborative that paints pictures on the spot for various festivals and shows.

Of course, painter-bassist-performance artists don't earn much, but in Montreal, they don't need to, according to Daniel Webster, a local producer for more than 20 years who runs two clubs and a production company, and something of a godfather to the alternative rock scene. "You can get by on very little here and put a lot into making your art," Mr. Webster said. And he said the conflict over language is overblown: "It is our little secret that there really ended up being no insurrection here," he said. "It's been peace, love and Jack Frost."

It helps that most musicians could care less about "making it" in the traditional sense. In fact, rather than lunging for a lavish advance, many of Montreal's most successful bands seem to resist the trappings of big industry. Consider the case of what may be Montreal's seminal musical success: GodSpeed You! Black Emperor, a dark-sounding, orchestral rock collective that has used its success to finance several local clubs and a record label. The band first emerged out of lofts and small bars, and despite a third record that sold 70,000 copies in the United States, they still have no major label contract, no management and no press agent. What the band does have is custody of their career.

Efrim Menuck, a band member, suggested that Godspeed had achieved success in part because they kept their goals realistic.

"We are still paying the rent doing this silly music thing," he said. "With all this attention, I worry for the bands. Someone who nails it right out of the gate and gets all of this attention, well, I rack my brain and I still can't think of a happy end to that story."

Howard Bilerman, a former drummer for Arcade Fire, an engineer and the overseer of Hotel 2 Tango, a recording space owned by members of GodSpeed You! Black Emperor, is similarly unimpressed by the current attentiveness of the American marketplace - including an article in the February issue of Spin magazine that described the Montreal scene as "officially cool." "What is going on here will continue to go on long after the attention has gone elsewhere," he says. "Giving back is an important part of cultural life here. History has shown that if you don't participate in the big music industry, you will have a much longer musical career."

And if you do, you may have a much shorter local career. Take the case of the Stills, alt-rock darlings who moved to New York for a stint and toured with the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, all of which earned them great American reviews, 83,000 American album sales and the enmity of their old, hometown fans.

On a recent Wednesday, they were in the midst of working on their next album in a rehearsal space they share with Sam Roberts - the Dears practice down the hall - in a massive industrial building that once served as the North American headquarters of manufacturing for RCA. The band is clearly enjoying making a new record and find quite a bit of humor in their current reputation as sellouts. "It's not like we went gold or anything," said Oliver Crowe, the bassist. "This city is renowned for its leftist politics. Any kind of success is going to be a problem."

Dave Hamelin, the guitarist, says he is proud that in a local newspaper poll, the Stills dethroned Godspeed as "most pretentious local act." On their last album, "Logic Will Break Your Heart," the band addresses their artistic and financial ambition on "Of Montreal:" with a lyric that suggests, "Friends getting old, We all dig for gold, the crumbs and pieces."

Meanwhile, Montreal has become such a cultural magnet that some Americans are relocating there. "We are a five hour drive from New York, and most of the flights are about $150," said Jon Berry, owner of Regenerate Industries, a public relations firm that works with various dance and electronic acts in Montreal, including Les George Lenigrad. "From a cultural and economic perspective, it makes perfect sense. It is a cheap place to do business and to live."

Mr. Berry, who is from Vancouver, visited Seattle often when it broke through to national prominence, had a taste of Austin when it was bubbling, and says that the current rage in Montreal carries some of the same energy. "Up until a few years ago, bands were skipping Montreal," he said, sitting at Laika, an industrial-feeling lunch spot/club on St. Laurent, where people were dining on pastries and cigarettes. "But then shows started taking off in the lofts, and suddenly you have a big neighborhood full of people interested in music. It's like Williamsburg, but it hasn't been gentrified."

Jeff Waye is the player/coach of the Ninja Tunes Deadly Karate Chops, the hockey team of the North American division of Ninja Tune Records, a dance music label. It sounds like a caricature of Canadian life, but it is one of 25 coed teams, composed of music industry types, that compete every year for the Exclaim! Cup, an oddly shaped but coveted totem of excellence. In an interview before heading to practice, he agreed that Montreal was a paradise for indie musicians and the small labels that sell them.

"You can argue that the push and pull of the two cultures have created something more dynamic than the rest of Canada," said Mr. Waye, who describes his own French as awful. "But I think it's more simple than that. When I moved here in 1991, I was living in a nine-and-a-half room apartment with two other people, and I was paying $175 a month. All of the money left, and all of the art stayed."

THE PLACES

Clubs

Casa Del Popolo (4873 Boulevard St. Laurent), La Sala Rosa (4848 St. Laurent) and El Salon (4388 St. Laurent) These clubs form the hub of the Montreal music scene, and are favorites of bands like Stars and the Dears.

Barfly (4062A St. Laurent) Every band cuts their teeth here, and it is still a meeting place for acts like the Stills and Starvin' Hungry. Capacity is only 65, and if you want to use the bathroom, prepare to ask the bass player to step aside.

L'Hemisphere Gauche (221 Beaubien E) Underground rock 'n' roll and pop.

Cafe Chaos (2035 St. Denis, Web site: www.cafechaos.qc.ca) This co-op run club hosts bands that do justice to itsname.

O Patro Vys (356 Mount-Royal East, Web site: www.opatrovys.com) Experimental music, not for the uninitiated.

Le Divan Orange (4234 St. Laurent) The bimonthly Mandatory Moustache nights have been packing the house.

The Underground

Much of the best music in Montreal is played in dank warehouses and abandoned office spaces. Visitors may find them hard to access, but they can start by checking www.montrealshows.com.

Fort Moshington (2106 Bleury) This is the fan-turned-promoter Aaron St. Laurent's living room. Capacity is 50 people, and leave your shoes at the door.

The Electric Tractor (6674 L'Esplanade) One of the most popular warehouses. Bands like the Gossip, Buried Inside, and Les Georges Leningrad have played here. A warning: pesky neighbors sometimes shut down performances.

Cryochamber (1180 St. Antoine, Suite 315) Perhaps Montreal's least conventional music spot. Last weekend, it sponsored a chili cook-off, treating fans of the band Crime Moth to $2 portions, provided they brought their own bowls.

Le Local (7159 St. Urbain) A new after-hours clubs, and home to bands like Lesbians On Ecstasy and Pony Up.
JOHNSON CUMMINS

THE BANDS

There has long been an incredible French-inflected music scene in Montreal. And let us further stipulate that there is a ferocious and vital industrial/dance scene. But right now, the dominant Montreal sound is a majestic kind of Anglo rock.

GodSpeed You! Black Emperor is instrumental to the scene and to the core, making baroque mood-rock that almost swings. The Arcade Fire makes American critics go all damp and sparkly. Whenever they show up, people mention the Talking Heads.

The Dears, both dismissed and praised as twee rockers, are smart boys and girls who mix dreamy, dancey instrumentation with wan, literate vocals. The Stills, the band their hometown loves to hate, plays guitar-driven, energetically sad songs. Their non-ode to songstress Alison Krauss is a classic.

The Unicorns are reportedly on hiatus - O.K., broken up - but you could do less well than to buy, their CD, "Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?" Sam Roberts, one of the few basement/loft acts to gain genuine mainstream acceptance, is the Canadian answer to Wilco.

Les Georges Leningrad is not a threat to end up in heavy rotation on radio stations, unless the signal is coming from another dimension. Their beats are prominent, their screeching more so, but they are extremely charming performers. Wolf Parade produces heavily synthesized art rock, but with catchy choruses. The Stars are the local favorites and unreconstructed romanticists. Pony Up! seems to be composed of five of Liz Phair's little sisters. If you like your girl-rock crunchier, do not forget that Melissa Auf der Maur introduced all her shows on her last tour by proudly announcing she was from Montreal.
DAVID CARR

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top

 

THE SECURITY ADVISER

No Returns

By RICHARD A. CLARKE

ast month, the self-appointed head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, railed against ''this evil principle of democracy'' and said he would send his fighters to kill people who tried to vote. Days before, in Washington, President Bush delivered an inaugural address focused almost exclusively on promoting democracy, which he portrayed as an antidote for ''our vulnerability.'' His theory was that ''resentment and tyranny'' simmer in undemocratic nations, breeding violent ideologies that will ''cross the most defended borders'' to pose a ''mortal threat.''

Given these statements by Zarqawi and Bush, Americans might well conclude that Al Qaeda's primary aim is preventing democracy. Following the president's theory, they might assume terrorism cannot grow in democracies and that the best way to deal with it is to create more democracies. Unfortunately, both beliefs may be mistaken.

Zarqawi and his followers do oppose democracy in Iraq, but they do so partly because they believe that the continuing electoral process (a constitutional referendum is planned for October of this year and a national election for December) is an American imposition. In this they are joined by the many Iraqis who simply want an occupying army to leave. In addition, Zarqawi's group seeks support from the Sunni Arab minority, which in any democratic process will lose power as compared with what it had in the decades of Baath Party rule.

Beyond Iraq, in the greater Muslim world, opposing democracy is not uppermost in the mind of Al Qaeda or the larger jihadist network. (In Saudi Arabia, for example, Al Qaeda wants the monarchy replaced by a more democratic government.) Radical Islamists are ultimately seeking to create something orthogonal to our model of democracy. They are fighting to create a theocracy or, in their vernacular, a caliphate (a divinely inspired government administered by a caliph as Allah's viceroy on earth). They are also seeking to evict American influence from nations with a Muslim majority (or even, as in Iraq, a Muslim minority, given their view that Shiites are, as Zarqawi put it, part of a ''wicked sect'' and not true Muslims). In pursuing these goals, today's loosely affiliated Islamic terrorist groups are part of a trend dating back to at least 1928, when the Muslim Brotherhood was founded to promote Islam and fight colonialism.

This trend hasn't abated with the spread of democracy. In Indonesia, which just achieved its third democratic transfer of power since Suharto's rule ended in 1998, the jihadist movement is growing stronger, as it is in other Asian democracies. In Algeria, free elections in 1990 and 1991 resulted in victories for those who advocated a jihadist theocracy. Throughout Western Europe, the jihadists are becoming deeply rooted among disaffected Muslim youth. Free elections, in short, have not dimmed the desire of jihadists to create a caliphate.

Even without jihadists, Western democracies have hardly been immune to terrorism. The Irish Republican Army, the Baader-Meinhof gang of Germany and the Red Brigades of Italy all developed in democracies. Indeed, in the United States, the largest terrorist attack before Sept. 11 was conducted in Oklahoma by fully enfranchised American citizens.

Thus, it is not the lack of democracy that produced jihadist movements, nor will the creation of democracies quell them. To the extent that President Bush's new policy is turned into action, the jihadists may well take it as further provocative American meddling, similar to the reaction to the president's earlier attempt at reform in the region, the Greater Middle East Initiative, which was dead on arrival.

President Bush's democracy-promotion policy will be appropriate and laudable at the right time in the right nations, but it is not the cure for terrorism and may divert us from efforts needed to rout Al Qaeda and reduce our vulnerabilities at home. The president is right that resentment is growing and that it is breeding terrorism, but it is chiefly resentment of us, not of the absence of democracy. The 9/11 Commission had a proposal similar to the president's, but more on point: a battle of ideas to persuade more Muslims that jihadist terrorism is a perversion of Islam. Most Middle East experts agree, however, that any American hand in the battle of ideas will, for now, be counterproductive. For many in the Islamic world, the United States is still associated with such acts as having made the 250,000 person city of Falluja uninhabitable. Because of the enormous resentment of the United States government in the Islamic world, documented in numerous opinion polls, we will have to look to nongovernmental organizations and other nations to lead the battle of ideas.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top

Is that a Versace walk or "Street"?

fashion
Fashion Week FAQ
Your nagging questions answered.
By Josh Patner
Posted Monday, Feb. 7, 2005, at 10:23 AM PT

Last year, during New York's annual fashion week, Josh Patner—former assistant designer for Donna Karan and co-founder of the popular label Tuleh—answered a few questions posed by the Slate staff: Just what is fashion week about, anyway? Is it, as one editor put it, "a snooty scam perpetrated by New Yorkers on poor slobs elsewhere"? Or is it an occasion for designers to present their artistic ideas? This year, we found we still had questions: How do you get your own fashion show? Why do the models walk like that? And do they eat at all? So we asked Patner back for another round.

1) How long is a fashion show? Are there refreshments? Do they start late or are fashion designers known for their punctuality? Do fans wait outside the shows to try and get a glimpse of their favorite models/designers?

A show can be as short as 7 minutes or as long as 20. The length really depends on how many looks are shown and the extent of the spectacle that accompanies the fashion. Sometimes designers open their shows with a brief film—say, the quasi-political montages favored by Kenneth Cole. Some houses, like Imitation of Christ, favor theatrics. Last season's show began with grating patriotic music. But while these extra bits can help round out the show—it is, after all, a show—they are more often than not annoying distractions. (Remember that it's hot in those venues, which are usually flooded with lights for video and television.)

Sometimes champagne gets passed around, or finger food. But rarely. Editors and buyers sometimes go to 10 shows or more a day, so they want to get in and out as quickly as possible. And some venues seat more than 1,000 people; that would be a lot of champagne.

Some shows begin promptly; some don't. Often the delays have more to do with changing the models' hair and makeup between shows than with the designer's grandiosity. Of the 30 models cast in a show, five of them might be the season's "top girls" who do five or six shows a day. Another 10 likely do four or five shows. The shows are not always in the main tents at Bryant Park (located in Midtown Manhattan). Designers show all over the city in gallery spaces, museums, and clubs. That means that the models—and the hair and makeup crews—have to hustle to be on time. And even models get caught in traffic.

Fans do wait outside shows, especially in Europe, where fashion has more of a cult status than it does in New York. But fans (fashion students, mainly) are likely waiting for an editor to pass them a spare ticket so they can see the actual show rather than just waiting for a glimpse of the designer. For most fashion fans, the clothes are the real star. It is an unspoken tradition among insiders to pass an unneeded ticket to the best dressed groupie. And sometimes fans forgo the ticket altogether and sneak past the bulky guards and army of PR people to see a show. It's considered a badge of honor to sneak into the shows of cult designers like Jean Paul Gaultier.

2) How do you apply to get to do a Fashion Week show? Is there some fashion board?

There is a fashion board: The Council of Fashion Designers of America, or CFDA, is the not-for-profit governing body of the American fashion industry. A trade organization, CFDA promotes the efforts of its member designers, works with nascent brands with an eye toward helping them to expand, and holds a yearly award ceremony. Their prize is the top prize offered in fashion, and considered a huge honor.

However, CFDA does not organize the fashion shows. 7^th on 6^th, an arm of the mega-marketing corporation IMG, coordinates the shows, the venues, and the calendar. (See last season’s FAQ for further explanation.) Venues range from $22,000 to $42,000 and are offered according to availability. So, in theory, if you can write the check you could have a show. Of course, there are some limitations: The anchor brands of American fashion are accommodated first, and many designers have held the same time slots for seasons. With approximately 150 designers showing over seven days, space is very limited. Some designers do not show in the 7^th on 6^th tents, and sometimes shows overlap.

3) Tell us about the models. Where do the models learn to walk? Does their agency teach them? And why do they walk like that? Why can't they just walk normally? Do the models really not eat? Do they diet before the shows?

You may have seen Jay Alexander, who works with Elite Plus in Paris, on America's Top Model. He's famous for teaching models to walk and is rumored to make quite a bundle doing so. But not every model takes walking lessons; some have a natural sense of presentation. "It depends on where the models are from," according to Andrew Weir, a New York casting director. "If they're from Brazil or South America, the walk is innate. The other girls have to watch the Brazilians for a season or two until they catch up."

There are a few walking styles. "If you say to the girls 'Do a Versace walk,' they know what that means—a va-va-voom, shake-it-like-you-might-break-it walk," says Weir. " 'Street' means no swish. It's strong, like the way people walk down a New York street." Most shows now use a near-natural street walk, described by Weir as " 'Street' plus a little bit more." That means a pretty natural stride with no hands on hips or posing. But the walk is still slightly exaggerated: Some extra swagger makes skirts swish dramatically and gives tailored looks a bit of extra power.

Although people don't like to believe it, models are not big dieters. They are blessed with fast metabolisms.

4) What does a fashion editor look for at the shows? What does an editor do with what they see at the shows?

People often think that the job of a fashion editor is completely mysterious. And, to the extent that theirs is the business of trafficking in taste, it is. But fashion editors are also journalists looking for news such as a novel silhouette or a new talent. They are looking for incipient trends, and are thinking about how best to bring them to life for their readers. While watching a show, they might jot a few ideas down, and many make tiny sketches of the clothes to trigger memories later. As the shows build from day to day, trends become clear. There is similar news at every important show, as though certain ideas are in the ether. The trench coat, let's say, or satin shirts.

In addition to looking for specific trends, editors are in search of what might best be described as a "mood." Fashion communicates something about a way of living. So Marc Jacobs' slightly retro silhouettes can recall the childlike exuberance of playing dress-up while Albert Elbaz, designing for Lanvin in Paris, favors erotic colors like apple green and acidy violets that make his classic lines roil with sexual tension. Editors suss out a prevailing mood, usually the one that seems most contemporary. That mood will then set the tone for the photography and the content of the magazine for the entire season.

Everything that follows is a matter of scheduling. Editors at a given magazine or paper hold fashion meetings, decide what to photograph, what location to photograph it in, and which models should wear it. They choose a photographer they feel is suited to the theme. They map out when to publish certain stories. Shopping habits are taken into consideration: A woman is likely to buy a new fall dress earlier in the season than a heavy coat. The stories fall in line.

5) What does a stylist do?

A fashion show is essentially a parade of outfits (or, as they are known in the business, "looks" or "exits"). In many cases, these outfits are put together by a stylist. The role of stylists as creative counselors to designers is understandably confusing, given that the depth of their impact on a designer's work varies from designer to designer. But a stylist's role is basically twofold: He or she works with the designer to put the various separate elements—jackets, pants, skirts, blouses, dresses, coats, and accessories—together in a way that best expresses the designer's vision for the season. The stylist also oversees the casting of the show, selects the models' outfits (and directs hair and makeup), and determines the order in which the clothes will be shown. So the stylist's taste—their personal sense of proportion and color, their knowledge of history and pop culture, their ideas of what seems fresh and modern—can have nearly as much impact on the fashions as does the designer's own taste.

Why would a designer need a stylist? A good stylist acts as an editor. They can refine diamond-in-the-rough ideas, galvanize a stalled mind, find the gold in the stacks of sketches that are all equally beloved by their creator. Remember, too, that the clothes shown on the runway often constitute only a small fraction of what is actually available for sale in a designer's showroom. A line might have 10 jacket shapes for sale, each of which might be made in five fabrics—that's 50 jackets!—but only three of which are shown on the runway. In short, collections can have thousands of pieces, so the selection of pieces for the runway show, which ultimately translates into international exposure that generates sales, is no slapdash affair.

6) What is the relative importance of the various fashion weeks? Is there a hierarchy? For example, is Paris more prestigious than New York? Does each week have different participants? Its own flavor or mood?

Fashion week occurs twice a year in New York, London, Milan, Paris, and Los Angeles for both men's and women's collections. There are also fashion weeks in Sao Paolo and Tokyo. Designers show in only one of these cities and not necessarily in their country of origin: American designers, like Rick Owens, show in Paris, as do British designers such as Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney. While it's true that each city has certain connotations—Milan is the commercial heart of fashion; Paris the seat of originality and innovation; the designers who show in London are often less established and edgier; and New York is known more for sportswear than for high style—the relative importance of a given fashion week is somewhat based on which city has more big name designers showing at any given time, and more major retailers and members of the press in attendance. Still, it's important to remember that commercial traffic is not necessarily equal to creative quality; and often the more obscure and less popular commercial collections are the most interesting.

7) Is it considered inappropriate to boo at a fashion show? How do you express dislike? Only catty comments afterward—or during the show?

It's hard to imagine a cattier business than fashion. While most insiders carefully consider a designer's work, it's hard not to snicker when the clothes being shown are pretentious or downright ugly. Neither is uncommon. And so while no one boos like they might at a sporting event, nasty comments can fill the tents like Naomi Campbell's bust fills a bikini. Fashion insiders would be dishonest if they did not admit to enjoying the disapproving glance shared with a colleague across the runway when a dud look trots by. I admit I've even passed a note or two. But sometimes a bad show is compelling, like watching a car wreck, and you can't tear your eyes away. But when a show is great, that's when it's truly compelling. There's a real thrill in beholding the work of a master craftsman or a canny provocateur.

8) Are there certain critics/writers whom designers love or loathe? Do designers read their press?

In the fashion world, there are only three influential critics (of those writing in English): Suzy Menkes of the International Herald Tribune, Cathy Horyn of the New York Times, and Bridget Foley of Women's Wear Daily. While other major newspapers cover fashion in a service-oriented way—that is, they suggest what to buy—the writers are not critiquing fashion as they might film or books.

Surely some designers secretly loathe their critics. And some critics secretly loathe certain designers. But the relationship is really one of co-dependence. Critics write, designers show, and neither can do their job without the other. Suzy Menkes, for example, was often very critical of Tom Ford's work for Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, but it was also clear that she respected him as a hugely influential talent. Designers—though they may deny it—care about the reviews. Even if they refuse to read them—and many do—they know when the reviews are bad. Friends tell them; they feel it in the air. And show me a designer who can resist reading a great review?

9) If I see an outfit during fashion week that I like, is it OK for me to copy it? Is it copyright infringement if I buy my own fabric and sew it myself?

Good luck. Can you draft a pattern? Can you sew? Make a buttonhole? Clothes are difficult to make—especially the styles you see on the runway. Even if you were a killer seamstress, you'd likely have a hard time matching the fabrics many designers use: They are often expensive and hard to come by in a fabric store. But there's no harm in copying the silhouette of a designer; fashion thrives on the imitation of ideas. Should you really manage to copy a designer's work, however, be warned: G. Thompson Hutton, a Manhattan attorney specializing in the fashion business, says, "In the U.S., you might be an infringer if the design had a design patent. But many designers fail to protect their designs and therefore their designs end up in other collections." And though designers rarely trademark their work, it would be hard to determine if the one you've decided to copy has done so.

10) Tell us a little more about the things or people one might see at a fashion show. For example, who are the famous fixtures? If you had to take a neophyte to a fashion show, who or what would you point out?

It's often said of fashion people that if their industry didn't exist they would find themselves unemployed. Who are these women wearing towering heels in the snow? Or the men in floor-length fur coats? Why do they have on sunglasses inside? Why do they look so mean? And why, for god's sake, are they kissing each other on both cheeks, European-style, on the corner of 38^th Street and 7^th Avenue?

Fashion is indeed a comic world, filled with overblown characters that are tantalizing to some and odious to others. While it's easy to see the people under the tents as one-dimensional cartoons, who they are and what they do is obviously more complex than any cartoonlike depiction—or brief description—could do justice to.

But were you at the shows, a few people might stand out: Anna Wintour, the chic and steely editor in chief of Vogue, likely dressed in Chanel couture, or Anna Piaggi, a longtime contributor to Italian Vogue who makes getting dressed a piece of performance art, often wearing an itty-bitty hat perched over her brow, like a circus clown. Or you might notice the difference between the magazine editors—dressed top to toe in the latest trends—and the retailers—usually dressed all in black, or in business suits. Maybe you'd see a TV star or two, or young Hollywood royalty like Sofia Coppola at Marc Jacobs, for whom she acts as muse.

Josh Patner was a founding partner of the design house Tuleh and has worked for Bergdorf Goodman and Donna Karan. He has written for the New York Times and is currently working on a book.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2113109/

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today's papers
Rice-Sharoni
By David Sarno
Posted Monday, Feb. 7, 2005, at 3:21 AM PT

Both the New York Times and (online) the Los Angeles Times lead with Condoleezza Rice's high-profile trip to Israel, where she encouraged Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to make "hard decisions" in upcoming peace talks with Palestinian leaders, including this week's summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt—the first meeting between top-level Israeli and Palestinian leaders since the current conflict began four years ago. The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal's world-wide newsbox lead more details of the Bush administration's budget plan, which will seek to eliminate or severely cut about 150 programs, most of them domestic, many "politically sensitive," and one in three related to education. USA Today leads an interview with former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who, after referring to tough language by Secretary Rice and President Bush as "nonsense," asked the U.S. to release billions of dollars in frozen assets as a gesture of goodwill.

Rice, who will meet today with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, heralded "a time of optimism" in the Middle East. (If the negotiations in Egypt go well, notes the NYT, the result could be "a long-term cease-fire" between the two sides.) Though details of Rice's meetings with Israeli diplomats were not released, she probably asked them to continue troop withdrawals from the West Bank, to avoid undermining Abbas' leadership ability, and to consider the release of more Palestinian prisoners. A companion NYT piece offers a portrait of a highly motivated Rice who plans her own itineraries and kicks aides off planes to make more room for reporters. She also correctly predicted the outcome of the Super Bowl: "Patriots ... by 3."

The Bush budget, which will be officially released today, is expected to generate hefty opposition from across the political spectrum. According to one WP source, congressional leaders have warned the White House that "no more than two dozen of the 150 proposals are likely to be accepted," and that many of the cuts are simply "dead on arrival." Concerned citizens should examine the list of proposals (about two-thirds of the way into the article), which includes cuts in law enforcement, land and water conservation, literacy, nutrition, Medicaid, and public housing. An NYT piece details a tweak that would double the monthly fees veterans pay for their prescription drugs. For its part, the LAT points out a lot of pretty fuzzy math the budget makes use of, like that the 2006 numbers don't include the many billions to be spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The New England Patriots won the Super Bowl by defeating the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21, the Pats' dynasty-making third victory in four years. The game's MVP was New England receiver Deion Branch, who had 11 receptions for 133 yards. Semi-injured Philly receiver Terrell Owens turned in his own impressive performance with nine-for-122.

The WP reports that in the wake of the elections, a swelling sense of national pride in Iraq may be contributing to a weakened insurgency, although the violence is by no means over. The Iraqi public appears less willing to put up with militant activity, judging by the increased number of tips that have led to arrests.

An NYT front asks if NASA is rushing its shuttles back to orbit without meeting the safety goals it set after the Columbia disaster in 2003. According to internal documents and interviews the paper conducted with anonymous sources, some NASA officials believe that the agency's leadership is reacting with unwise haste to pressure from the Bush administration, which is eager to see the International Space Station completed and to have people land on Mars.

The WP fronts one Beijing taxi driver's decadelong struggle to organize his coworkers in China's highly union-hostile environment, which affords workers almost no protection from employer exploitation.

USAT fronts a brief look at the "lobbying war" over Bush's Social Security overhaul. Both conservative and liberal groups will spend tens of millions on advertising in an attempt to sway public opinion. Here are some of the names of the lobby groups—only one is liberal (can you guess which?): For Our Grandchildren, Progress for America, Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, Campaign for America's Future, Citizens for a Sound Economy.

The LAT's Column One is the story of a veteran soldier's application for conscientious objector status, a rarity in the era of the volunteer military. When the Army sergeant declined to report for a second tour of duty in Iraq, he was called a coward by a superior officer, an embarrassment by a chaplain, and a deserter by military authorities. He has decided to face the possibility of court martial rather than return to Iraq, where he was horrified by the carnage and by the callous behavior of some fellow soldiers.

Pass the Bar? An Ohio State Supreme Court Justice was pulled over for drunk driving last week, creating a stir in the Buckeye State. The judge drove away from police without permission after refusing a sobriety test. As shown in a video released yesterday, the suspect actually attempted to convince an officer to let her go by citing her own rulings in previous drunk driving cases.

David Sarno is a writer in Iowa City.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2113209/

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today's papers
Shiite Might
By Emily Biuso
Posted Sunday, Feb. 6, 2005, at 2:49 AM PT

The New York Times leads with the push by leading Shiite clerics for Islam to be the guiding standard of the new Iraqi constitution. The Washington Post leads with the effort by a top Shiite politician to include Sunnis who boycotted the election in the writing of the new constitution. Adel Abdel-Mehdi—the current finance minister and the leading Shiite candidate to become Iraq's next prime minister—encouraged participation by the Sunni groups, who had earlier indicated they would be willing to work with the new government. Though Abdel-Mehdi's remarks signaled a de-escalation of tension, he did reject a demand by Sunni leaders for a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces. The Los Angeles Times leads with major budget cuts sought by President Bush. Some of the most vulnerable populations—from public housing residents to Medicaid recipients to farmers on price supports—would be touched by the billions of dollars of cuts.

According to the NYT, the Shiite clerics are not united on how much the constitution should be based on Islam, and some conservative leaders think Sharia (Koranic law) should be the basis for all legislation. This would be a major departure from the transitional law enacted by Americans before the interim Iraqi government took over; that legislation granted equality for minorities and women and qualified Islam as merely "a source" of the laws. A State Department official indicated the Bush administration is, at least for now, simply watching as the Iraqis sort out the issue.

More violence broke out in Iraq, making Saturday one of the bloodiest days since the election, says the Post. According to the papers and various wire reports, two American soldiers were killed by a mine explosion Friday night north of Baghdad. On Saturday, a Marine was killed during "security and stability operations" north of Baghdad, and at least 33 Iraqis were killed in a string of incidents across the country. Among those were a member of Baghdad's city council and a member of Iraq's intelligence service who were killed in separate drive-by shootings. Video footage posted on an insurgent group's Web site showed seven Iraqi National Guardsmen being killed. And questions continued to surround the kidnapping of an Italian journalist. At least two different groups have claimed responsibility for the abduction.

Also on Saturday Iraq's electoral commission released new results reporting Shiite-affiliated political groups leading in the south. The Post says the vote count for the National Assembly will be completed by Thursday, and the NYT reports that the electoral commission has fined political parties who violated election rules.

The LAT fronts a profile on Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who was influential in what is appearing to be a major victory for Shiite Muslims in the Iraqi election. In preparation for shaping the constitution, he has reportedly been studying the American, French, and German constitutions.

The papers are unsurprisingly heavy with Iraqi electoral news. In fact, the election has been so all-consuming, says the NYT, that ordinary Iraqis are talking about the Americans a lot less these days.

While the LAT focuses on the people and programs harmed by the domestic budget cuts proposed by the White House, the NYT's front page story on the potential reductions spotlights the implications of the limits on subsidy payments to farmers. The move is a major policy shift for the administration, and it pits the president against some of his greatest allies in the rural South. The Post homes in on the difficulty in getting Congress to go along with the budget slashes.

The NYT fronts—and others stuff—a report that federal prosecutors have ended a criminal investigation into whether several CIA officers lied to their superiors and lawmakers about a secret antidrug operation that ended in 2001 with the tragic death of American missionaries in a plane that was shot down in Peru.

The papers report that NATO troops located the wreckage of a missing Afghan plane Saturday; it looks as though no one could have survived.

The NYT editorial board has grim words summing up Bush's Social Security plan: "The more we learn, the worse it gets."

The Post fronts a story on a growing environmental movement within the evangelical Christian community, noting also inside that more than 1,000 clergy and congregational leaders of mainstream churches and synagogues have signed a statement chastising the president for rolling back and opposing programs that were environmentally friendly. The NYT runs a piece on an ongoing debate over "The Death of Environmentalism."

Daniel Okrent, the NYT's contentious public editor, takes on Judith Miller's curious appearance on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews last week. As Slate's Jack Shafer noted, Miller claimed that the White House had made "belated and sudden outreaches" to Ahmad Chalabi "to offer him expressions of cooperation and support" and perhaps even "a chance to be an interior minister in the new government." Despite the shocking nature of this news, it hasn't appeared in the Times. Okrent learns that at least a few Times editors were unaware of Miller's statements about Chalabi. Miller didn't respond to Okrent's calls or e-mails, and executive editor Bill Keller wouldn't talk to Okrent about the issue, so the public editor is left to point to the paper's "Ethical Journalism" handbook, which instructs reporters not to "say anything on radio, television or the Internet that could not appear under his or her byline in The Times."

The WP reports that newly confirmed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will be taking three White House attorneys with him to the Justice Department to be his top aides, despite his assertions during confirmation hearings that he sees a difference between representing the White House and representing the country. Two of the lawyers were in charge of the White House's response to the investigation into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. As the Post puts it: "That investigation is being handled by, uh, the Justice Department."

Emily Biuso is a free-lance writer in New York.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2113201/

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FINDING ONE'S WAY Some directives for surviving Washington are not so obvious.

February 6, 2005 New to Capitol Hill? 10 Tips to Avoid Ruin By ELISABETH BUMILLER ASHINGTON THE start of every presidential term brings to Washington eager new cabinet officers and members of Congress who take the wrong elevators, get lost in the hallways and pop off to reporters. But such faux pas - Senator Ken Salazar, a freshman Democrat from Colorado, says he has not yet found the Senate dining room and is eating ham sandwiches in the public cafeteria - are hardly the worst of it. As everyone knows, Washington is shadowed by the specters of grand scandals past: Richard M. Nixon and Watergate, Oliver North and Iran-Contra, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. More recently Bernard B. Kerik, President Bush's short-lived nominee for homeland security secretary, jettisoned himself for his troubles with a nanny and then turned out to have a Manhattan love nest, a serious no-no in Washington. Unlike New York, the nation's capital has always had a Puritan streak and remains a curious mix of raging ambition and Midwestern values. So now that the president's State of the Union address has signaled the official start of the year, here are 10 rules, culled from those who have learned the hard way, for avoiding social, political and legal disaster in Washington. 1. Don't get up in the middle of dinner and announce that you have to run off to do "Larry King Live." Well-mannered Washingtonians tell hostesses that they will drop by before or after their appearances on nightly programs like Mr. King's. "You should tell your hostess ahead of time," said Sally Quinn, the Washington writer and hostess who is married to Benjamin C. Bradlee, former executive editor of The Washington Post, and the author of a book on entertaining. Otherwise, Ms. Quinn said, there will be a gaping hole at the dinner table. (Mr. King's interview show is on CNN at 9 p.m.) For dinner on big occasions like election night, guests can graze in the shows' green rooms, the lavishly catered holding areas that have evolved into the new Washington dinner parties. 2. Don't use the expression "Do you know who I am?" The answer from the young woman looking for your lost ticket at the charity dinner check-in table may well be an embarrassing no. Also, the question is generally not effective, unless your goal is frightening her. "It doesn't make your ticket appear more quickly," said Carolyn Peachey, a longtime Washington event planner who has heard the expression for decades. The only time Ms. Peachey has given a dispensation for the expression's use was last fall, when the music mogul Quincy Jones was prevented from entering a reception at the State Department. A plate in his head from brain surgery had set off the metal detector, Ms. Peachey said, and 20 minutes of talking to the guards made no difference. "Do you know who I am?" Mr. Jones finally asked. The guard replied yes, Ms. Peachey said, but insisted there was nothing to be done. Mr. Jones eventually got in through intervention from higher-ups. 3. Don't withhold information from your lawyer. Former White House counsels, lawyers for white-collar criminals, and the city's highly paid damage controllers all agree: This is the premier mistake that otherwise intelligent people make in Washington. Cover-ups are often worse than the problems themselves. "What inevitably happens is that the facts dribble out, compounding the story, because reporters are not going to give up until they beat the competition and dig up something new," said Lanny J. Davis, a Washington lawyer brought in for White House damage control during the Clinton scandals and the author of "Truth to Tell: Tell it Early, Tell it All, Tell it Yourself." Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel for Ronald Reagan, who vetted the current President Bush's cabinet nominees during the 2000 transition, heartily agrees. Nominees have to be prepared, he said, honestly to answer the awful questions posed by White House lawyers: Have you ever had an affair? Or used drugs? A yes to either of those questions, Mr. Fielding added, was not necessarily a problem. "There's a difference between somebody having an affair years ago, before their first marriage broke up, and someone having an affair with someone he supervised," he said. As for drugs, "occasional drug use in college would not be a disqualifier." 4. Don't change your hairstyle too often. "There is zero tolerance for coif inconsistency," said Mary Matalin, a longtime adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and a former television talk show host who is, at the moment, a brunette. Over the years she has been blonde, light brown or, as she put it, "hijacked by hyper-highlights ranging from dull orange to bright white." In short, Ms. Matalin said, "You have to pick a color and stick with a color." 5. Don't plan to announce your new nominee before a proper vetting. This applies more to presidents than to ordinary folk, but it is an important corollary of Rule No. 3. C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel for the first President Bush, said that he was under constant pressure from the president and his staff rapidly to investigate the background of cabinet nominees so that Mr. Bush could fill jobs. "I was pounded, relentlessly, when I was counsel," Mr. Gray said. He recalled that in 1988, when President-elect Bush insisted on quickly announcing Carla A. Hills as the United States trade representative, Ms. Hills and Mr. Gray agreed that Ms. Hills's husband, Rod, would have to resign from a steel company board to avoid any conflict of interest with his wife's new job. The problem was that Mr. Hills was on a plane until 4 p.m., and the president wanted Ms. Hills announced at 2 p.m. But she refused to say publicly that her husband would resign from the steel board without asking him first. So Mr. Gray called the Federal Aviation Administration and got in touch with the commercial plane's pilot, who summoned Mr. Hills to the cockpit, where Mr. Hills gave his O.K. "I think it violated all kinds of F.A.A. rules," Mr. Gray said. "The point of the story is that these are very difficult issues, and you can't back down." 6. Don't wear a beaded Armani to a Friday night dinner in Cleveland Park. The clean lines of Armani are highly desirable in Washington, and the first lady's white cashmere Oscar de la Renta wowed the town on Inaugural day. But even in a city as formal as the capital, be careful not to overdress. Andrea Mitchell, the NBC correspondent who is married to Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said she was reminded of that recently when she wore a black silk Armani pantsuit with a beaded top to dinner one Friday in Cleveland Park, an affluent, liberal enclave of faded Volvos in the city's northwest quadrant. Every other woman, she said, was in slacks and turtlenecks. What to do? "Laugh it off and realize that in Washington what you say and what you know is more important than what you wear," Ms. Mitchell said. 7. Don't think it is your job to educate reporters. "You just bite your tongue on certain topics," said Ed Rollins, a veteran Republican strategist and the manager of Christie Whitman's successful campaign for governor of New Jersey in 1993. Mr. Rollins did not follow his own advice later that year, when he infamously boasted to reporters at a breakfast in Washington that Ms. Whitman's campaign had paid African-American ministers and Democratic workers $500,000 in "walking-around money" to suppress the black vote. This statement, immediately recanted, prompted a federal investigation, which found nothing illegal. But Mr. Rollins's words had brought the political establishment down on his head and tainted Ms. Whitman's victory. 8. Don't believe your own spin. "I was guilty of that," said Mr. Davis, the Clinton defender. Mr. Davis said he first spun out the argument that there was nothing wrong with political donors attending coffees at the Clinton White House because no money was actually collected there. "I tried to believe it, because I was technically correct," Mr. Davis said. "But people were expected to give money before or after the event." 9. Don't forget who your friends are. "The biggest mistake that people make is that they base their friendships on who is in power and who is not," Ms. Quinn said. "This is short-sighted, because very few people in Washington stay in power for a length of time. In the same vein, people will count people out once they lose power. This is always a huge mistake, because people are never out unless they're in the ground with a stake in the heart." 10. Don't forget where you came from, and that integrity matters. "People think the values here will be different than the ones they left at home, and they're not," said Robert S. Strauss, a Washington sage who is the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a longtime Bush family friend. "It's the same damn thing that you have in Dallas or Los Angeles or Houston. People value loyalty here as much or more as they do anywhere else." If all else fails, Mr. Fielding has the surefire way to avoid social, political and legal ruin in Washington. "Move to Kansas," he said. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top

THE MUSE Douglas Hannant, the designer, and Debbie Bancroft, who wears his fashions on the charity circuit

February 6, 2005 Courting Park Avenue, One Socialite at a Time By RUTH LA FERLA ESS than an hour before the young collectors party for the 51st Winter Antiques Show, Debbie Bancroft stood in a dressing room weighing her options. Would she wear the eggplant-color satin dress with the nipped waist or the mink-edged leather jacket and satin pants? Her designer, Douglas Hannant, was partial to the pants, fretting that the dress might be too "lady," as he put it. But Lauren Evans, Mr. Hannant's publicist, who sat in at the fitting at Mr. Hannant's garment district showroom, quickly overruled him. "The eggplant one makes you look younger," Ms. Evans told Ms. Bancroft, a New York social figure. Not surprisingly, Ms. Bancroft chose the dress. As dramas go, this one - played in a muted key a little over a week ago - could not have rivaled the shrill theatrics just then taking place in the studios of Mr. Hannant's peers among American designers, most of whom were bracing for New York Fashion Week, which began on Friday. As competitors worried about impressing the phalanx of fashion editors, stylists and Hollywood stars whose approval helps to market clothing to the millions, Mr. Hannant worked quietly under the radar, training his sights on a narrower constituency: the Park Avenue set, of which Ms. Bancroft is a member. "My ladies are rich, and they make no apologies," the designer said. "They want to look rich, and they even like to use the word rich." Let Marc Jacobs woo Hollywood hipsters like Sofia Coppola. Let Proenza Schouler polish its status as Anna Wintour's darlings. Mr. Hannant, a maker of $3,000 jackets and $8,000 suits cut to show a little cleavage and a little leg, pursues the bon ton. The game is centered on Ms. Bancroft, 50, a long-serving volunteer organizer of arts benefits in New York and Southhampton. Beginning two years ago he enlisted her as a client, then as a friend and finally as an ambassador to wear his clothing to luncheons and galas, where she has spread a taste for his label to equally social and cosseted New Yorkers like Audrey Gruss, Tiffany Dubin, Valesca Guerrand-Hermès, Pamela Gross, Lally Weymouth and Gigi Mortimer. "Celebrities appeal to Middle America, but at the end of the day the women who really buy these clothes are in the 10021 ZIP code," said Ms. Bancroft, who in some ways is an unlikely muse for a designer . For one thing she is about twice the age of the women fashion designers traditionally adopt for that role. But it is Ms. Bancroft's life more than her lithe frame or sense of chic that sings to Mr. Hannant. A resident of the Upper East Side and Southhampton, where her family plays tennis at the Meadow Club and swims at the Bathing Corporation, Ms. Bancroft has served as a chairwoman of fund-raisers for the Drama League, New Yorkers for Children and the Parrish Museum in Southhampton. She is so popular among the ladies who lunch that Avenue, a magazine for the Social Register crowd - or what is left of it - recruited her in 2003 to write Chronicles, its party column. Mr. Hannant named his show two years ago "Southhampton Blonde." "He was not necessarily thinking of me but the lifestyle," Ms. Bancroft explained. As a way to build a business Mr. Hannant's strategy is an anachronism, harking back to the 1960's and 70's, when it was perfected by American couturiers like James Galanos and Bill Blass, who dressed socialites like Nan Kempner, Nancy Reagan and Lynn Wyatt and mingled with them. It is unclear whether Mr. Hannant, whose label is eight years old, is the equal in talent of those earlier designers. The fashion establishment has been slow to embrace him - his candied confections of fur piled on tweed piled on satin seem at a glance to have been conceived in a time warp - but it may not matter, because he has a growing base of luxury shoppers. He has ingratiated himself with "an understated customer," said Robert Burke, the fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman, which carries Mr. Hannant's designs on the fourth floor alongside labels like Chado Ralph Rucci and Oscar de la Renta. "And he did it in a grass-roots way, getting close to these women, learning who they are, how they live and what they want to wear to lunch." Unlike the Hollywood elite, who borrow or buy a designer's fashions one piece at a time, Mr. Hannant's New York customers purchase a wardrobe from him each season, paying $3,000 to $5,000 for jackets, $8,000 for suits and $15,000 for hand-embellished evening dresses. They readily part with $100,000 to $200,000 at one of his trunk shows. The business is tiny by Seventh Avenue standards, but growing. Mr. Hannant projects wholesale revenues of $4.5 million this year, 20 percent more than 2004 and double his 2002 sales. Ms. Bancroft said she met Mr. Hannant, 39, at a benefit for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund and soon found herself fending off his persistent lunch invitations. "To be honest I wasn't sure what being a muse entailed, of just what I was getting into," she said. More to the point, "I knew I couldn't afford him, even wholesale." (If the truth be told, Ms. Bancroft, who is married to Billy Bancroft, an investment banker, with two children in private schools, is not in the same financial stratosphere as some of her friends. The family lives on East 72nd Street, not Park Avenue, and Ms. Bancroft jokes that their home in Southhampton - they rented until recently - is on "the wrong side of the highway," north of Route 27.) Still, Mr. Hannant continued to press her, eventually lending Ms. Bancroft a suit to wear to a lunch. She was surprised when he didn't ask for it back. Now most of her wardrobe is Douglas Hannant. She pays nothing for the clothes and basks in his attentions - the private fittings, the evenings out and the four or five daily telephone chats. Under his gaze, she has slimmed down from a size 10 to a 4 or 6. "To be honest I love the attention," she said. "I'm flattered by it. He fills a void that husbands don't." Among the friends she introduced to Mr. Hannant's candidly WASP style is Ms. Dubin, a former fashion curator for Sotheby's. (She is a stepdaughter of A. Alfred Taubman, its former chairman.) Ms. Dubin is obsessed, she said, with the designer's white leather walking shorts unveiled last September at his spring show. The collection had an Upper East Side stamp, "but it didn't seem as lame as those things usually are," she said, adding: "It had an edge. Not a teeny-bopper edge, but one that made it O.K. to be in your 30's and 40's." ON the Friday before the young collectors party, Mr. Hannant escorted Ms. Bancroft to Soho House to celebrate the birthday of a publicist and fashion show producer, Kevin Krier, who is staging Mr. Hannant's fall show in the tents of Bryant Park on Wednesday. That same week he accompanied Ms. Bancroft to the opening of the Winter Antiques Show, one of the premier social events of the season, held at the Seventh Regiment Armory. Days later, again in the company of Ms. Bancroft and of Ms. Guerrand-Hermès, he and Frederick Anderson, his companion and the company's chief executive, chatted up the crowd at the young collectors party. "It's a lot of work to keep up, to go out, not to all the events but the right events," Mr. Hannant said. It seems at times that Mr. Hannant, a native of Illinois, aspires not just to dress his uptown clientele but also to share their lives. Ms. Bancroft says, "He is not impressed by the life I live, but I would say he enjoys it." Mr. Hannant fairly revels in his access to what he calls "a very exclusive little club." And though he stressed that his courtship of Ms. Bancroft was not a strategic move, he acknowledged that on meeting her, "I had this feeling about Debbie that she would be very important to me." They share an emotional bond, Mr. Hannant said (he finds her refreshingly unpretentious), and an affinity for the good life. "I've always been attracted to luxury," he said. "I just have a taste for that." Mr. Hannant and Mr. Anderson share an apartment in Manhattan and a country house at Dingmans Ferry in northeastern Pennsylvania. "But I spend the summer in the Hamptons together with all my girls," Mr. Hannant said. That phrase, he knew, had a familiar ring, invoking Mr. Blass, who famously called his clients "gals," and to whom Mr. Hannant is sometimes compared. "He is definitely filling a territory that Bill Blass had," said Patty Raynes, a daughter of the Hollywood mogul and billionaire Marvin Davis. She is another customer who found Mr. Hannant through Ms. Bancroft. Christina Makowski, the owner of Georgina, a Manhasset, N.Y., store that caters to the country club set, predicted that Mr. Hannant might well become a Bill Blass for the next generation. "You're always going to have that group of women you have to dress for occasions, substantial women with money," she said. "That's how Bill started, and Douglas may be following that blueprint." Like Mr. Blass, an Indiana native who decamped for Manhattan in pursuit of the high life, Mr. Hannant moved from near Quincy, Ill., where his parents, he said, "owned a lot of land." He met Mr. Anderson, 39, when they were students at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Mr. Anderson, who grew up in Fayetteville, Ind., is a quick study, who has become versed in his wealthy customers' habits and lives, dropping their names with practiced aplomb. "I always know to call Patty after noon," he said of Ms. Raynes, a champion horsewoman. "In the morning she is with her horses." En route to the young collectors party, Mr. Hannant sat in tense silence in the back of a chauffeur-driven car as Mr. Anderson smoothly quizzed Ms. Bancroft about her charities, declaring a bit showily, "It's time for the Red Cross Ball to come back, don't you think?" At the party, Mr. Anderson air-kissed Ms. Guerrand-Hermès, who wore a pale tweed Hannant coat trimmed with a red fox collar, and chatted cozily with Susan Fayles-Hill, a writer and patrician New Yorker, who is, Mr. Anderson stressed, a friend, not a customer. He conceded that his intimacy with such society pillars serves the bottom line. "There are two ways to grow a business," Mr. Anderson said. "You can come out loud and strong, scream and holler and hopefully catch up if your business takes off." This is a reference to designers who elevate their profile with splashy shows and red-carpet product placement. "Or you can grow quietly, one customer and one store at a time." Mr. Hannant sells his clothes nationally at stores like Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue and has also made inroads in affluent enclaves like Winnetka, Ill., and Greenwich, Conn., relying on as many or 60 or 70 trunk shows in a season to boost sales. His customers could buy Chanel, Valentino or Oscar de la Renta but often prefer Mr. Hannant's designs. Marissa Hartington, the owner of Marissa, a cavernous high fashion outpost in Naples, Fla., suggested a reason. "He offers special cuts for special sizes, something other designers seldom do," she said. "I think that's a goldmine for him." The clothes sell in the absence of a splashy national advertising campaign or of much favorable press. Reviewing his fall 2004 collection in The New York Times, Ginia Bellafante wrote with some bite: "His clothes drip with the vast expense of their own creation. Beaded pants come with beaded coats and, again, ostrich feathers. " Mr. Hannant and Mr. Anderson maintain that in business they prefer a slow build, inviting their handpicked insiders to buy at discount or to borrow from the showroom on 38th Street and encouraging others to pay full price. "There is this whole idea that everyone on Seventh Avenue is selling out the back door," Mr. Anderson said heatedly. "We don't. We don't lend our things out unless it's Debbie or Valesca or our name is on an event." Ms. Guerrand-Hermès and Ms. Bancroft are "friends of the house," Mr. Anderson elaborated, "and they see us as their friends." Mr. Hannant for his part also seems to thrive on those relationships, motivated by affection, and perhaps a degree of self-interest? Ms. Bancroft considered for a beat. "He is completely capable of it," she said, unperturbed. "He's a very soulful guy. But of course, he is a businessman." Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top

Today's Highlights in History
See a larger version of this front page.		On Feb. 6, 1952, Britain's King George VI died; he was succeeded by his daughter, Elizabeth II. (Go to article.) On Feb. 6, 1895, George Herman 'Babe' Ruth, baseball's great star, was born. Following his death on Aug. 16, 1948, his obituary appeared in The Times. (Go to obit. | Other Birthdays)
		On February 6, 1875, Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about Reconstruction. (See the cartoon and read an explanation.)

On this date in:
1756	Aaron Burr, America's third vice president, was born in Newark, N.J.
1788	Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1895	Baseball hall-of-famer George Herman ''Babe'' Ruth was born in Baltimore.
1899	A peace treaty between the United States and Spain was ratified by the U.S. Senate.
1911	Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, was born in Tampico, Ill.
1933	The 20th Amendment to the Constitution was declared in effect. It moved the start of presidential, vice-presidential and congressional terms from March to January.
1945	Reggae musician Bob Marley was born in St. Ann parish in Jamaica.
1959	The United States successfully test-fired for the first time a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile from Cape Canaveral.
1989	Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara W. Tuchman died at age 77.
1993	Tennis hall-of-famer and human rights advocate Arthur Ashe died in New York at age 49.
1998	President Bill Clinton signed a bill changing the name of Washington National Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
1999	Excerpts of former White House intern Monica Lewinsky's videotaped testimony were shown at President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial.
2000	First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton launched her successful candidacy for the U.S. Senate.
2001	Ariel Sharon was elected Israeli prime minister in a landslide over Ehud Barak.
2002	A federal judge ordered John Walker Lindh, the so-called ''American Taliban,'' held without bail pending trial.
2003	ABC's ''20/20'' aired a British documentary on Michael Jackson in which the singer revealed he sometimes let children sleep in his bed.
2004	An explosion ripped through a Moscow subway car during rush hour, killing 41 people.

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Current Birthdays

Natalie Cole turns 55 years old today.

AP Photo/Jennifer Graylock Singer Natalie Cole turns 55 years old today.

88 Zsa Zsa Gabor Actress 83 Patrick Macnee Actor 74 Rip Torn Actor (''The Larry Sanders Show'') 74 Mamie Van Doren Actress 66 Mike Farrell Actor (''M*A*S*H,'' ''Providence'') 65 Tom Brokaw Former NBC News anchorman 62 Fabian Singer 62 Gayle Hunnicutt Actress 61 Michael Tucker Actor (''L.A. Law'') 56 Jim Sheridan Writer-director 49 Jon Walmsley Actor (''The Waltons'') 48 Kathy Najimy Actress 48 Simon Phillips Rock musician (Toto) 48 Robert Townsend Actor-director 47 Barry Miller Actor 45 Megan Gallagher Actress 43 Axl Rose Rock singer (Guns N' Roses) 39 Rick Astley Singer 36 Tim Brown Rock musician (Boo Radleys) 21 Brandon Hammond Actor

Historic Birthdays
Babe Ruth
2/6/1895 - 8/16/1948 American professional baseball player (Go to obit.)
80	Aaron Burr 2/6/1756 - 9/14/1836 3rd Vice President of The United States
73	Sir Charles Wheatstone 2/6/1802 - 10/19/1875 English physicist
83	William Maxwell Evarts 2/6/1818 - 2/28/1901 American lawyer/statesman
31	Jeb Stuart 2/6/1833 - 5/12/1864 American Confederate cavalry officer
67	Sir Henry Irving 2/6/1838 - 10/13/1905 English actor/stage manager
57	F. W. H. Myers 2/6/1843 - 1/17/1901 English writer/cofounder of the Society for Psychical Research
48	George Tyrrell 2/6/1861 - 7/15/1909 Irish-bn. English Jesuit priest/philosopher
68	Melvin Tolson 2/6/1898 - 8/29/1966 African-American poet
33	Eva Braun 2/6/1912 - 4/30/1945 German mistress/wife of Adolf Hitler
83	Mary Douglas Leakey 2/6/1913 - 12/9/1996 English-bn. archaeologist/paleoanthropologist
52	Francois Truffaut 2/6/1932 - 10/21/1984 French film critic/producer

February 7, 2005

EDITORIAL

Why Felons Deserve the Right to Vote

n a watershed moment for the debate over whether convicted felons should be allowed to vote, the American Correctional Association has issued a welcome statement calling on states to end the practice of withholding voting rights from parolees and people who have completed their prison terms. Noting that society expects people to become responsible members of society once they are released from prison, the organization, which represents corrections officials, also called on states to cut through the confusing thicket of disenfranchisement laws by explaining clearly to inmates how they get their rights back after completing their sentences.

Some five million Americans are barred from the polls by a bewildering patchwork of state laws that strip convicted felons of the right to vote, often temporarily, but sometimes for life. These laws serve no correctional purpose - and may actually contribute to recidivism by keeping ex-offenders and their families disengaged from the civic mainstream. This notion is clearly supported by data showing that former offenders who vote are less likely to return to jail. This lesson has long since been absorbed by democracies abroad, some valuing the franchise so much that they take ballot boxes right to the prisons.

Several states are now reconsidering laws barring convicted felons from voting. In Maryland, for instance, the legislature is considering a bill that would eliminate a lifetime ban that remains in place for some offenders. The Maryland bill should pass. And other states should follow suit.

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This is a photograph that was made on July 4th weekend, 2004. My daughter Olivia Frances and my son, Michael Patrick. I am by far and away the luckiest man in the whole wideworld to have been blessed with the greatest two kids that have ever been born. And this stands without one single word of hyperbole.