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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
A tour of socialist Venezuela, where 98 percent of the people are poor and the other 2 percent ogle metrosexual Tarzans and silicone-perfect blonds at a well-lubed fashion show.
Jan 15, 2005 | The New York Times doesn't know it yet, but it has a chief Venezuelan fashion correspondent. And I'm it. Models strut down the runway under an enormous white tent and wave to their sugar daddies. I'm not anyone's sugar daddy, but I wave back anyway. Through the sashaying legs I intermittently see a man who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ricardo Montalban. He has a blond on each side of him -- rib-removed, collagen-boosted silicone beauties. They wrap their pneumatic lips around fluorescent straws for hits of Bellini between jealous stares at the newer flesh up on the runway. The models come out one at a time in pink thongs, leopard-print thongs, jeweled thongs. Each thong draws a big cheer from the crowd until a bigger cheer is drawn by the next. Thong warfare.
This is the best assignment in the world, and I suppose I have Alex Deep to thank. His family owns the Casablanca Fashion Group, a chain of high-end fashion boutiques where affluent Venezuelans can get the latest from Dolce & Gabbana, Armani and Versace all under one roof. They produce this show annually to publicize the spring lines.
Deep wears a retro-tailored Armani suit, steel chains around his neck and at least two tones of red streaked through his hair, swept up in the style of a David Beckham mohawk. The final accessory is an admiring coterie of Venezuelan princesses. Alex Deep wants to be a music producer. He has a recording studio in Miami and spins at Boston nightclubs. A drunken Mexican introduced us to each other at the Manhattan nightspot Hiro, where Deep appeared to have fallen into a vat of Dolce & Gabbana. A week later, he offered to fly me to Venezuela if I would write a piece about this show. He mentioned that his family was looking to expand their fashion business to the United States, and I imagine that they wanted publicity.
Of course, I don't know anything about fashion and did not pretend to. But I had followed Hugo Chavez's socialist coup of this country and even found amusement in his more colorful rhetoric. If Paris was well worth a mass, post-capitalist Caracas is certainly worth a fashion show.
I picked up a few back issues of Vogue and flew down.
Soon we are driving around the city in Deep's armored Jeep Grand Cherokee. The Deep Jeep is a unique automobile. It has a panic button to kill the engine and signal a satellite in the event of a kidnapping, inch-thick windows to stop bullets in the event of a shooting, and a hefty driver trained to speed like a madman if necessary.
We are headed into the mountains for a birthday party. In Latin America the upper classes say that bodyguards are like testicles -- big, hairy and always outside when the party happens. Alas, it's funny because it's true. Outside the house is a black-suited phalanx of armed men, big and grisly with indigenous features. The SUVs form a row of bulletproof chrome beneath a 10,000-volt wire of death suspended above the 9-foot fence surrounding the estate. Outside is the city, and outside it will stay.
