NJ Star Ledger Interviews Clay About Fashion Week

Clay was interviewed by the NJ Star Ledger for Fashion Week, which Clay took part in yesterday.

Fashion week: Cole, Clay and Katrina converge
Saturday, September 10, 2005
BY JENIFER D. BRAUN
Star-Ledger Staff
NEW YORK -- Where do you find singers and socialites, protesters and policemen, etiquette experts and emaciated models all happily munching doughnuts together?

At Fashion Week, of course, where the unveiling of next spring's clothing styles kicked off yesterday with a breakfast presentation by designer Kenneth Cole.

Famous for adding a hefty dose of altruism to his fashion shows, Cole was true to form, opening his show in Bryant Park with a short video featuring

In the film clip, Goldberg was arrested by the "Fashion Victims Unit -- FVU. Or as we like to say, Fah-Voo." They took her to task for her red-carpet fashion disasters, and she chastised them for caring about fashion when the world has so many other problems -- like people left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.

Although unrepentant ("I've been on the worst-dressed list my whole life and I'm proud of it -- nobody else can say that but Cher!"), Goldberg gets off with just a short stint at Vogue. And Cole announced that the models and other participants in his show were donating half their fees to hurricane relief; Cole matched their donations and took his bow at the end of the show in a Red Cross T-shirt.

"We stand bayou," the screen read as the clip ended.

Stanley Tucci and Clay Aiken were among the celebrities in the audience; it was Aiken's first fashion show.

"I was in town, and I wear more of Kenneth Cole's clothes than of any other designer," said the "American Idol" heartthrob.

But his own style was, he said, "codependent. I need somebody else to put it together for me."

Still, Aiken's a fast study. After watching Cole's collection of loose, unstructured outfits in muddy neutral shades of brown and gray -- leavened with a bit of brighter green and purple -- he quickly picked out a favorite.

"That first brown outfit, I like that," Clay said backstage after the show, pointing. "It's nice, it's the kind of thing I would wear."

He didn't render a verdict on the women's outfits -- high-waisted, loose pants and some surprisingly frilly dresses in bright, sheer, crinkled chiffon -- that paraded down the catwalk. But Cole's more adventurous options for men -- fringed and patterned bags that looked suspiciously like pocketbooks, and men's shorts so short they'd require the use of specialty underwear -- did not win the star's approval.

"See that?" he said, pointing to one shorts outfit. "You couldn't pay me enough money to wear those shorts."