There’s No Skirting the Obvious: He’s a Fool for Fashion

As New York’s Fashion Week kicks off, look beyond the glamour, the style and the haute couture and consider the human wreckage the fashion industry leaves in its well-heeled wake: the fashion widower.

That’s what I am--one of the faceless casualties who, twice a year, thanks to the spring and fall fashion shows in New York, Paris, London and Milan, is tossed aside like yesterday’s Prada. Throughout my fiancee’s fashion-writing career, I have logged countless hours watching E!’s “Fashion Emergency,” walked miles of retail floor space and sat through endless lectures on the sociopolitical ramifications of crinoline, all in the hope that she would let me be part of her stylish world.

The worst part of having a September birthday used to be the inevitable sweater gift. Now, every fall, my fiancee celebrates a week and a half of New York’s spring runway shows and parties while I am left with a freezer full of Healthy Choice entrees and a bottle of Cold Duck.

Last year, I turned 35 contemplating how TV Land would handle the Darrin swap on “Bewitched” while she spent the night in New York witnessing something she’ll only refer to obliquely as “denim revival.”

On my 34th, she toasted my birthday with a flute of champagne while watching fine-boned men half my age strut the runway in New York’s Bryant Park while I alphabetized the spice rack to the tune of the Allman Brothers’ “Whipping Post.”

Without even realizing it, I’d started to pay attention to fashion. First I began noticing the magazines--dozens and dozens of the big names like Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan. Then, as time passed, I looked forward to my fiancee bringing home strange glossies with names that sounded like German adverbs. The cover models on these magazines had ruddy, imperfect faces and eyes that looked like burnt holes in a blanket. Some ran more than 700 pages with only two paragraphs of microprint text about alpaca-shearing in Peru.

Finally, I started discerning different permutations of magazines she already had--Harper’s Bazaar in two sizes (“One for the purse,” she said) and British Vogue.

I felt obliged to take a UCLA Extension course in textile care in order to properly do the laundry. Her clothing collection squeezed us out of one apartment. The new apartment had an extra room--just for the shoes. She asked me to be the godfather to her shoe collection. I became the zookeeper in her exotic footwear sanctuary, watching mules cavort with sling backs; pumps lay down with heels and flats lounge in the dark corners. I watched the collection multiply.

Things got worse.

I could easily point out the latest Kate Spade handbag. After all, who couldn’t notice the tiny rectangular tag that said “Kate Spade”? I became conversant in Burberry plaid--the fashion posse’s version of a clan tartan. The distinctive pattern was easy to spot at great distances, and I pointed it out repeatedly with great zeal.

I’ll never forget the day my fiancee asked me to attend my first runway show in L.A. I tried to shrug nonchalantly, but I had butterflies. I told her I’d go because I was curious. I told myself I would go for the sexy models. And, when the moment finally arrived, all I could do was gaze up in rapt attention and whisper my verdict in her ear: “Camouflage was so last year.”

From that moment on, I had fashion fever. I learned to distinguish a Manolo Blahnik from a Jimmy Choo at 30 paces ... by sound. I attended parties in airport hangars. I had dinner with Mr. Blackwell. I met Steven Cojocaru. I bought a tuxedo, hoping that she might find me a worthy Sherpa on her fashion treks.

To no avail. When the next season’s shows rolled around, she was gone like a half-price Birkin bag. The harsh truth was unavoidable--she would never take me with her. I wasn’t going to be a fashion player, I was destined to cheer from the stands. There wasn’t room for me in her world.

But I’m not giving up.

Every time fashion week rolls around, I stock up on Evian misting bottles, travel pillows and cooling gel facemasks. I postpone elective surgery, scour the Internet for Elsa Klensch’s biography and study my fabric swatches.

If I’m ever asked to be part of that rarefied world, you can bet I’m going to join my fiancee along the catwalk. Because a naked woman in Playboy might be smut, but a naked woman on the runway with $2,000 worth of crepe knotted around her waist is high fashion.

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Adam Tschorn is a comedy writer who is engaged to L.A. Times staff writer Booth Moore.