Should Celebrities Take Over the Catwalk?

Beyonce at Tom Ford. Amber Rose at Indashio. Cassie and Serena Williams at Laquan Smith. Vanessa Simmons and Dawn Richard at Edwing D’Angelo. Ellen at Richie Rich. 

While some designers complain about the pressure to pay celebrities to grace their front row, others are enlisting famous faces to actually model their clothes.

This can’t be surprising. Celebrities serve as models all season long getting photographed in designer’s clothing, thus serving as a promotional tool. Having a celebrity wear your clothes is almost a guaranteed mode of increasing sales, especially if that star is Rihanna, Beyonce or First Lady Michelle Obama. 

To that end, designers gift celebrities a ton of clothes, pay them to appear in the front row at their fashion shows, elect them as their muses (Ciara the most recent example at Givenchy) and now, enlist them to model designs on the runway.

The lines between Hollywood and Fashion are fainter than ever. And here’s the problem with the collision of the entertainment and fashion industry. It abandons that once-glorified profession: modeling.

Models have been banished from the covers of magazines, replaced with celebrities who, as I once complained, aren’t the easiest to work with. While models come to do a job and transform to any look you assign them, celebrities may come with an entourage, may be difficult about beauty and style direction (understandable-they’re careful about their image) and often haven’t conquered the art of posing. Yea, you’ll be there coaching them all night.

Now, celebrities are replacing models on the catwalk as well. While some celebrities can strut like the best supermodels (I’m sure Beyonce stormed the runway with her signature Sasha Fierce attitude); and a celebrity walking in a show gives the collection more media attention, I’m not sure that I want an entire show to feature celebrities (save for “The Red Dress Collection” which is less about designs and more about awareness and giving back).

It becomes less about the designs and more about the famous bodies wearing them, in my opinion. What’s your take on it? Do you think more celebs should walk in fashion shows? How do you think it affects models who are already struggling for jobs? Discuss.

Kisses,

Coutura