carine roitfeld altFashion Statement is a little taken aback this week. Yes, there has been plenty of your run-of-the-mill wackiness (Lady Gaga is being controlled by Alexander McQueen\'s ghost, Lady Gaga is wearing Star Trek-inspired facial prosthetics and, well, insert your own bizarre royal wedding rumour here, because FS point-blank refuses to read any more stories about it), but in among the eye-rolling came a rather refreshing interview in Spiegel with Carine Roitfeld, late of French Vogue.
Not only does Roitfeld reveal that - shockingly! - she wears flat shoes occasionally, but also that she thinks designer clothes can be (gasp!) hideously overpriced and that she DOESN\'T CHANGE HER HANDBAG EVERY SEASON. We know! Astonishing, no? FS is also particularly taken with the quality of the interview questions. Sample:
Spiegel: Does this world of vanity, in which fortunes are spent on trivial things, corrupt people?
Roitfeld: The fashion industry certainly has its obscene sides. The cost of a coat can be obscene ... Of course, it\'s not like we\'re working in a hospital; we don\'t save lives every month. We just make decisions about skirt lengths, about an inch more or an inch less. That\'s all.
Wow. You\'d never get that kind of reality check from Karl Lagerfeld, who is more inclined to equate fashion to a hybrid of brain surgery, rocket science and a major world religion. But wait! There\'s more:
    Spiegel: Did that [the inability of fashion to save lives] ever seem pointless to you?
    Roitfeld: For 10 years, it was a hell of a lot of fun. But, toward the end, it unfortunately got less and less fun … The atmosphere [at shows] isn\'t as electric as it once was, and they now have about as much charm as a medical conference.
Next time FS goes to a fashion show, we are totally wearing scrubs (shh, pedants in the back, we know you wouldn\'t actually wear scrubs to a conference - stop missing the point, spoilsports). If Roitfeld has decreed a similarity, that\'s grounds for a whole new trend in our book. Bring out the pale blue pyjamas, STAT!