Cape Town is now Boss Models turf. CHRIS ROPER watched the launch
BOSS Models launch, Hemmingway’s, October 3, 1996. I arrive at 9pm “Cape Town time”, as the press release requested. A large crowd mills around at the entrance stairs, kept back by a token velvet cord and three large bouncers in equally token black suits. Well, no problem thinks I, I’m on the VIP guest list.
It turns out that, in a staggeringly efficient piece of public relations, everyone is a VIP. I resign myself to waiting. After fifteen minutes, I get bored with the excitement of watching arrogantly dressed, beautiful people plaintively wailing “but I’m a V-I-P” (they spell it out in case the bouncer doesn’t understand) when their confident advances are halted. So I turn to reading the press release.
Hmm. Apparently, “Cape Town offers … a wealth of never-before-seen locations”. I gaze around suspiciously. Surely I’ve seen this place before? In fact, surely most Capetonians have seen Cape Town before? Perhaps it doesn’t count if only the natives see it. Ah. Apparently Cape Town is “currently being called “the New Miami”. Damn, I’m going to have to ditch all those business cards I just had made. I do see the similarities, though. Lots of gangsters, lots of badly dressed men in linen suits and shoes without socks. In a touching commitment to affirmative action, I am informed that Boss Models Cape Town will be under the direction of a “South African native”. He has a funny name, “Paola De Vito”. Must be Zulu.
I start to wonder exactly why we are being kept waiting outside. Hemmingway’s is a large place, and it doesn’t look too full from where I’m standing. Suddenly, three cameramen arrive, floodlights are switched on, and two large white stretch limos glide up. Out jump the Boss models and entourages. In the press release, Boss Models claims to be “the agency that invented the male supermodel”, and I can see what they mean. These boys are not of woman born, they look like products of some high-tech genetics design studio.
A path is cleared for them, and they are filmed pushing through the throng. The filmmaker is going to have to edit in applause and groping hands: the Cape Town crowd stares apathetically, their minds dulled by the freezing southeaster and, let’s face it, their natural proclivities. I suddenly realise why we’ve been kept waiting outside. They’ve created a fake crowd, so that the video won’t show the models looking silly being welcomed in true Cape Town style, ie by a drunk bergie waving the stretch limos into a non-existent parking place.
Miraculously, we’re suddenly allowed in. There are hundreds of people there, the cream of South African media and fashion. And they are all dressed in basic, boring black. Are these people really in charge of our fashion sensibilities? The music is mindless 1980s hi-energy garbage, the conversation is all about the protocol of guest lists, and there’s an unseemly scrum around the bar.
Almost everyone is white, and the very few black people that are there all have an American accent. This marks them as local, of course. While chatting to people who never meet my eyes, I realise that I am living a Zen paradox. At a gathering where everyone has come to be seen, who does the seeing?
After a few hours of crushing boredom, I look around for the “modling (sic) talent” that the press release promised. Apparently, “sick talent” was the right term for them during the photo shoot aboard a yacht on Tuesday – most of them got seasick and puked. I put this rumour down to jealousy, especially when I am informed that the boys have left early because they’re going on a shark dive at 5am the next morning.
I leave as well, thoroughly nauseated by the whole exercise. What is this occasion marking, if not the unhappy propensity of the fashion mythmakers for being seduced by their own drivel? It’s a kind of self- directed baaskap that plays itself out on unreal stages with tacky soundtracks, and I for one have had enough of being colonised by mindlessness.