This week marks the official relaunch of a dedicated men’s fashion week in New York. As Samantha Bee, a former Daily Show correspondent and soon-to-be host of her own show, sees it, it’s a big step toward gender equality in fashion.
Or almost, anyway. As she discovers in a visit to designer Robert Geller’s studio during a casting session, the men’s shows really just get a few days, and the male models populating them still have terrible problems to contend with, including an unrelenting schedule of parties and free drinks, and the constant admiration of women.
Along the way she teases out, with much sarcastic sexism, the stereotype that male models aren’t the brightest, while parodying the kind of ogling that female models endure. “Himbos,” “stylish imbeciles,” “Donny dimwits,” and “magnificent doofs,” she calls them, as they respond with bemusement.
She also looks into the body type that’s in demand at the moment. ”What’s on trend now?” she asks model Max Von Isser. “Big and beefy? Skinny? Sleek?”
His wry answer: ”Very, kind of alien-looking…. More kind of like a shaved otter.”
The video is the work of Amazon Fashion, a major sponsor of New York Fashion Week: Men’s. Appropriate since, as Bee notes, Amazon specializes “in delivering packages.”