By Todd Stone
Arthur Arbit, taller than most everyone else, dressed in a brown suit, mustard colored shirt, and a patterned silk handkerchief tied in a bow around his neck, whizzed in and out of the dark crowd. He was busy getting the models in order and emceeing his show.
A crowd of young people, mostly Brooklynites, had gathered to watch a fashion show at Glasslands, a divey performance venue and bar on a desolate street in Williamsburg. It was the second and final night of Williamsburg Fashion Weekend. The weekend was Arbit’s creation and aimed to showcase young, experimental designers – with an emphasis on performance.
One of the favored shows of the evening featured clothing by Williamsburg’s Corinne Zach and her creative partner, who together call themselves “Tar and Feather.”
In their act, the low stage light revealed a heap of five or so people, lying in the spaces created by one another’s bodies – in between legs and arms and curved stomachs.
As the music came on, the bodies began to rise one by one, as if emerging from drunken slumber. Each model walked around the stage, slothfully, showing off the designer’s messy wine-stained clothing.
When the models reached the side of the stage where a coterie of photographers were snapping away, they each struck an awkward pose and then stumbled off stage.
The act was named “The Walk of Shame.”
“The idea behind this was when you wake up in a guy’s apartment in the morning and you end up wearing his clothing to work,” Zach said. “This happens more often than you might think. When we told people the idea, they would say, ‘Oh, that’s happened to me.’”
One of the girls in the crowd, Jeanette Hayes, a painter from Bed-Stuy, said that some of the models in the first act were unprofessional.
“They just felt uncomfortable,” she said, “probably because they didn’t have enough to drink.”
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