I love this video, not for its critique of the over the knee boot trend in fashion capitals Paris and New York. That I will leave to the crazy/brilliant/crazy Awl writer Mary HK Choi:
I can’t deal. It’s fall 2009 and what they’ve predicted has all come true. I’ve seen ’em. They’ve officially descended upon us like the vinyl-clad seat of a dominatrix who mistakenly thinks we want our faces suffocated. They’re everywhere. On the street. On public transportation. The sticky, deplorable, throbbing, bastard mass sprung from the loins of FASHION like so much Strangé perfume from Grace Jones’ womb: the over-the-knee-boot.
This is old news as far as EVERYBODY showing some version of this on their runways for fall but now we’re beginning to see them, not on the spindly femurs of stick people like Vogue Nippon’s Anna Dello Russo who’s so thin JAPANESE people want to give her a sandwich and then fly a plane sideways through the isosceles triangle of negative space between her thighs. I’m seeing this scourge on the worst canvas imaginable—regular folk. The Gucci, Louboutin, Choo, Chanel has trickled down to Charlotte Russe, Victoria’s Secret and Steve Madden and yo, this is BAD NEWS.
No, my interest is in the cackling, clearly extemporaneous voice over by legendary NY Times street cameraman Bill Cunningham. A New York Times personality who talks like a New Yorker. That is actually cool.
[Having a hard time getting an embedded video from the NYTimes site, so the link at the top of the post will have to do. At least I know it works.]