It was just before full-moon on a chilly September night in Paris when Suzy Menkes, the International Herald Tribune's influential fashion editor, realised the full horror of her situation.
The day before, Menkes had filed the last of three stories on the weeklong spring/summer couture shows........... stories composed in virtuoso displays of meaningless ( but none the less fearless) drivel begun on her laptop in a front-row seat beside the catwalk.
Or had she?
The actual words written at the time were
“ My God, what a dogs' breakfast, no one with an ounce of humanity would wish to be seen dead in a ditch with any of this, and I think I just saw one of the models trying to eat her hat”
On pressing “send”, this should have been passed through the Vogue Filter and come out as...
“dressed in a navy-blue Issey Miyake Pleats Please pants suit, with a gray-blue pin-striped Mandarin-style silk jacket lined in pink, and black jodhpur boots. She looked a bit like an Asian empress on a shooting holiday in the English countryside”
Unfortunately, the machinery would appear to have blown a gasket somewhere and the story appeared as written.
Ms Menkes has been suspended from The Fashion Writers Guild and has been formally stripped of her most distinctive feature......an odd-looking flip in front: a long demi-pompadour that is coiled back on the top of her head, creating a dinner-roll-size opening that you can see through from the side......by Order,......the Court of the Fashionistas