Animate Corpses

Fashion Week

Animate Corpses

When I became a model, years ago, a subtle shift happened in the way people treated me, as though I were no longer human. To be fair, everything about this industry encourages that perception: the magazine photos where we flash our dead eyes, the little food we survive on, the killer stilettos we strap to our ankles. And then there’s the runway, where we hold the gaze of a million critical eyes as works of art. Animate corpses: not people.

When we enter the catwalk, all personality falls away and we are nothing more than moving manikins, meant to display satin and tweed to their most advantageous angles. Expression distracts so we wear death masks, faces devoid of sentiment. Behind the scenes, it is another matter. We are women with lives, in disagreements with our boyfriends, obsessing over TV shows, and rethinking if we want to go to university. But this time of year, in Paris, all that takes a back seat.

In the weeks leading up to the show, we watch the news to see if the President will close the country. Strange civil unrest seems to be spreading like wildfire, jumping from one country to the next. Nobody paid much attention when reports came out of the United States of aggressive behavior and riots leaving countless dead. Everyone knows it’s a violent nation. Even when brutal footage escaped various countries in South America, it was business as usual. But then the bug for ferocity crept up to colder climates and the Canadians started shooting each other. That made the world pause and sit up. The casualty list is rising, hundreds of flights are canceled in an attempt to protect the borders, and nobody knows who to blame or what’s causing it.

Thankfully, the President has decided this contagion is a bug that cannot cross the Atlantic, and the master of ceremonies breathes a sigh of relief when the country remains open. With the World Health Organization suggesting these strange behaviors could be a psychological illness transmittable in close quarters, the fashion show is moved outside. After a few hasty calls, the Champs-Elysees will be our catwalk. The girls squeal with delight. Fashion should be for everyone, and we are the ambassadors, bringing the world’s finest creations to the public.

La Federation is all nervous energy. They’ve poured countless hours into these handmade ensembles. My dress is a dream. Delilah, the maker, is a genius. I’m privately very thankful I’m not wearing a boxy monstrosity. This dress synchs at my waist in an enormous sage green ribbon nearly the width of my torso. The puffy folds of tule stop mid-thigh and instead swirl up, past the low neckline, like a hazy mist of clouds. My hair is fluffed and sculpted into a stringy bramble with a mixture like sap. It will be hell to get out, I don’t doubt, but for now, I look like a woodland goddess. The makeup artist has lined my eyes with orange and black that reminds me of birds’ wings, and the whole work sparkles like lightning bugs hover around me.

Behind the flap of the big white tent the girls dance about on shaky knees, getting out the nerves. Once out there, in the eye of the public, we cease to be. It’s not us on display, me with my B- in Social Justice and Peruvian boyfriend who won’t return my calls; it’s just the clothes, these culture-breaking works of art. I’m in line, waiting, my heart in my throat, pounding.

“You’re next.”

The man with the headset and clipboard pushes me out, and I strut like I was taught. The Champs-Elysée is far in the distance. Facial muscles fall flat, eyes straight ahead, the crowds of Parisians and the cultural aristocracy blurring into the cream white of the city around me. It’s a relief. I don’t have to know where my life is going, seeing all the cracks and fissures. For this moment I don’t have to think about what I do or say or what I’m wearing: I am an icon, the bleeding edge of fashion. It will last until the end of this walk, when I step out of this dress and must scrub the sap out of my hair. For right now, I am perfect.

I can feel them, the crowd. This show is unlike others. The space is not a large chamber but an infinite sky, tall buildings, and people, so many people, lungs breathing and eyes watching. I keep locked on the girl in front of me and our feet devour a sure path. Camera clack and flash. There is a gasp, a shout, and I don’t look because I’ve been trained to do this, to walk and show no emotion. At first, I think the noise is awe at the creations, but no, there is actual screaming. This is the risk of opening fashion week to the public: distractions. But I am a professional and I do not break stride.

The screaming increases and I feel the crowd ripple like a wave. Someone falls into the street ahead of us. I finally turn my head and can’t make sense of what I see. People attack other people, lunging at them, and tackling them to the ground. Suddenly I feel naked. I am naked, with nothing more than gauzy fabric between my skin and the world. My mouth drops as a man staggers jerkily to the model behind me and he bites her. She screams, her spindly limbs clawing to get away, until he rips her throat out. He chews.

I run, and the high-heeled shoes make it painful and futile. The crowd is a writhing mass of maggots as people try to escape and others, inexplicably, try to eat them. I trip over someone and hit the ground, scratching the skin off my knees. I blink, meeting a pair of hazy eyes, cobwebbed with white. Dead. This man, laying on the ground in front of me, is dead.

Abruptly his face contorts, jaw opening wide, teeth smeared with blood and bits of flesh and hair. He reaches for me and I jerk back. I yank my heel off and jam it into his skull. It goes through an eye and there is no blood. I scramble to my feet, the other heel gripped tightly. A body hits me like a wrecking ball and I go down.

My head hits the cement and I’m stunned, the world going fuzzy. Colors swirl above me, models, audience members, and the citizens of France. The illness – some fading part of my brain puts together – it’s here, at fashion week. The woman who knocked me down is wearing red. She grabs my shoulders. It’s another model, Patricia, from Brazil. Hope sparks through me: she was so nice. She’ll help me. She pulls me up and slams my head back down, cracking the skull just as I realize her dress was not originally red, and her blue eyes are so much foggier than I remember.

Laying out there on the sidewalk, another model snacking on my thigh (but leaving alone – I notice – the gossamer tule which Delilah spent so long hand sewing) I know shortly, in minutes or hours, I will rise. My long limbs, so valued and praised for how the clothes draped off me, gangling at my side. I will walk stiffly, as I did down that catwalk, eyes unfocused, no longer coordinated. I will hunt, like Patricia, for someone to kill, eat, amid the mob of spectral models dressed in this year’s haute couture. My walk will never end. I relinquish all hope with one last human thought:

 At least the undead never looked so good.

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