Fashion Week Redux

I know it's not Sunday (lord, do I know it), but I felt that I couldn't remain silent. As you may know, it's Fashion Week in New York, just in case you felt like there wasn't enough really important stuff for us to think about. So naturally, I was scanning the slide shows at The New York Times and The L.A. Times, when I came across this photo:

The Deadly Omahyra!

I have done battle with this Omahyra, and as you can see from the picture, I am lucky to have escaped relatively unscathed. It was the spring collection, 2002 (or thereabouts), at Nicole Miller. Through an unusual string of circumstances, I was enlisted to dress models backstage for the show. This entails pretty much what you might imagine - putting clothes on the lovely mannequins before they trip out onto the runway. Time is short and the clothes can be complicated, and if you mess up your model plus Nicole will string you up by your hair and let Cathy Horyn laugh at your jeans. Omahyra was my charge, the model I was to dress. Things were going fine until, during a quick change, with a mere 73 seconds left before she was due back out on the runway, we were pitched into a heated battle over whether the deep cowl dress had the drape in the front or the back, and Omahyra took out her giant gantlet-gloved hands and punched me in the face and ran away. I sank to the ground, seeing stars and the Nicole Miller signature pattern flash before my eyes. And she had the cowl in the front! A sad day for fashion everywhere. But I'm fortunate to be alive, considering the massive power of those enormous hands.

*I kid, of course. Omahyra was fabulous and lovely. When she punched me it hardly hurt at all.

photo by Mark Mainz / Getty Images