our local cinema for this after-
noon, to see the new movie on
couture. Will anyone count with
me the faux pas in this declar-
ation, ignoring entirely the op-
portunity costs in avoiding the
Spielberg flick on The Post, a
movie on a rural mother's battle
for justice with the local cops,
and the re-telling of Aciman's
novel on young men in Tuscany -
all being screened in the same
building? Or shall we just let
it go with the oxymoron in at-
tending a film on couture in
broad daylight? The affront of
uncouthness is hard to conceal.
It developed, that reconsideration got
the better of this plan. I'd like to
attribute it to being distracted by a
beautiful day - and the weather would
allow that characterization. But, my
decision to postpone this experience,
at best, and probably until the re-
lease of a dvd, was enabled by learn-
ing that the people with whom one was
to discuss this thing, have not even
seen it. So much for mice such as I,
even if it really should turn out to
be, the last Day-Lewis movie, a rumor
no one can verify for several years.
The seductiveness of fashion - and
I have not always been impervious -
achieves its acutest advantage if
its form is otherwise irresistible.
A Day-Lewis movie comes plausibly
close enough, not to be ruled out,
even at the inflated prices of to-
day's cinema salons, gratuities not
included. The genius of fashion, on
the other hand, lies in its shrewd
substitution of itself for its use.
A table setting by Jean Puiforcat,
for example, has so little to do
with dining, and so much to do with
remembrances of the Normandie, that
one doesn't know whether to meet in
a deck chair or a life jacket. This,
being what one needs to know of cou-
ture, secures its berth permanently
among the higher opportunity costs,
with rough justice, an embarrassment
of the Pentagon, and fumbled kisses.
It has been lost on no one, need
I say, that the career of Daniel
Day-Lewis has absorbed itself so
thoroughly already with justice,
fumbled kisses, and devastating
American war, that his leap into
the milieu of couture seems not
only fitting as the last of this
nonsense that he'll have to en-
dure, but a fine farewell frock.
Of course, one wants to see him
assault this final peak, and un-
doubtedly only raise it higher.
This is an expectancy to savor.
