$6,000 Chanel Jackets Are Out!

WHITE WOMAN DOWN A model bites it at Prada (Photo: Getty Images) This week, Milan's fashion shows—of spring '09 ready-to-wear collections—marks the fashion industry's turn to pretend that it has any relation to real people and economics. The guy who runs men.style.com tells the Wall Street Journal that "The most casual guy in the room may just be the first one to get laid off," which is pretty nonsensical. (The guy getting laid off is probably the most recently hired.) Still, the trend is toward "clothing that will survive trends and frequent dry cleaning to remain wearable in several years." Ewww, people are going to start wearing outfits twice now??? The $6,000 Chanel jacket is over, claims a designer! So we're supposed to wear things for more than one year? Gag. "We are far from the gilded age of the 1980s and the tech boom of the '90s," agrees Pulitzer-Prize-winning™ fashion critic Robin Givhan in the WaPo. Oooh, this really is it, the end times, the coming of the end, the fashion rapture, the ultimate correction.