“I Mean…What?!?” – Abe Gurko

Here we go again. Just what we need, another celebrity cum laude fashion designer. Enter Katie Holmes. When will the world learn that “celebrity designer” is an oxymoron. Yes, there are designers that by sheer virtue of their brilliance and craft become celebrities…and rightfully so. Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano, Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren, you know who belongs on that list. And it’s really not that long a list either, if you ask me. Sure there are a lot of “designers” who are really good, and a slew who think they are brilliant. They are just over-glorified dress makers. For them, there is little hope because their existence is based on ego. I don’t care how successful they are, but a life based on ego is not a great life. Then, somehow, over the past decade the lines between celebrities and designers got really blurry and we now have been inundated with schmatehs by celebrities who want to be designers like Lauren Conrad, Nicole Richie, Posh Spice…excuse me…Victoria Beckham, Jessica Simpson, Miley freakin’ Cirus. Now add the new collection by Katie Holmes and her stylist best friend.

And do you know what the worst part is? The retailers who, like moths to the flame, are partially responsible for the current crushed state of the fashion industry. Out with Victoria, in with Katie. Out with that L.A.M.B., in with Stinky.  Am I the only one who is annoyed by all this? And the fashion press with their endless coverage of celebrity rags. Yikes. That, coupled with the celebrity rags paying lip service to the celebrity rags…it’s insidious.  We have celebrities designing shoes, hand bags, this, that. FOTZ!!! Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Gretta Barbo, Norma Shearer would have sooner walked off (dramatically) into the sunset and obscurity rather than try their hand and schmateh making. It’s shoc…king. As I watch from the inside eye of the fashion hurricane as to how much cow towing is going on, it really makes me sad. Like we need to make room in this crowded market for some frothy little notion that Katie Holmes & Co. conjures up between acting gigs? Hey, Katie…why not follow suit like Melrose Place and do a reunion season of Dawson’s Creek. Now that is what the world is waiting for…not a some Scientological schmatays. I mean…what?!??