Fast Forward

The people who sell, buy and otherwise traffic in fabric jammed into the California Mart in downtown Los Angeles on Friday night to witness no less of a visual spectacle than Hale-Bopp: dozens upon dozens of young models in glaringly tight, often abbreviated clothes riding down an escalator/runway from the second floor, where they had suited up, to the lobby, where they posed briefly on platforms before hopping back on the moving stairs for the return flight.

“If you were short, you were doomed,” said one unfortunate viewer who got screened out by “what must have been hundreds of women wearing platforms.”

About 1,200 members of the fashion trade, plus a healthy fringe element of blue hairs with vampire makeup and navel rings, lined up around the block to get into the so-called LOOK party featuring the apparel industry’s more fashion-forward fall collections. Luckier were the guests at the just-finished Directions show, featuring the creations of Kellie Delkeskamp (pictured at top left with friends Dana Williams and Teen magazine Associate Editor Christine Skaglund) for Josephine Loka, among 19 other lines. They merely trickled out the doors of the Fashion Theater into the maw of food, drink and throbbing music.

Pity the poor boutique owner who had to rise early the next morning for the Mart’s “One Hour of Retail Power” seminar.