Oh yeah, and it’s Fashion Week, too

By Joe Brown

Monday, Feb. 4, 2008 | 5:18 p.m.

For a month with such a dreary reputation, February is offering up some pretty hot stuff: Groundhog Day. The Super Bowl (or whatever we call it here). Super Tuesday. Mardi Gras. Chinese New Year.

And, oh yeah: Fashion Week in New York City.

If you want to know what it's like, you can't do better than reading Cintra Wilson's better-than-being-there story on the spectacle on Salon.com.

Cintra's seen it all, but this was her first time at this particular fair. Standout observations:

"Verrier's models seemed to have been directed to affect a strange, sticky type of prance, as if the entire runway was made of hot Jujubes." And: "Pretty is pretty, but during Fashion Week your eye needs a few turnoffs to get truly excited. You crave that intoxicating moment of transgression when disgust flips into lust."

Watch that space for more from Wilson, who is also the author of one of the smartest and funniest books about American culture's fame-sickness, A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Reexamined as a Grotesque Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations.