No One Here Gets Out Alive

Rachel Comey is back to gravedigging. After a spring collection of clambake-plain shorts and dresses, the former director of Exquisite Corpse art gallery exhibited a gallery of downtown ghouls in her Fall 2008 ready-to-wear show.

Forewarned is forearmed: Autumn will be the season of the unemphatic undead.

If you've ever wondered about the closets of the undead (honestly, who hasn't?), Comey provides the answer in 31 thrifty looks.

The undead shop at the Valparaiso, Indiana Goodwill store.

Before you clutch your crucifix, you need to know that the Valparaiso Goodwill outlet is unlike any other thrift store. Last October, a vintage Marii-pleated Mary McFadden evening gown sold for a whopping twelve dollars plus tax. The purchaser removed the original Bergdorf price tag before selling it on eBay for nine-hundred dollars. The gown was sold to a nebbish fashion curator who has one of the most eccentric collections of vintage couture in the world.

Comey has tapped into the vein of the recycled and the timing couldn't be better. This makes Comey an acute modernist, someone perfectly in step with the pressing need to cut out and cut back. If there ever were an antidote to the fantasia that is Paris Fashion Week, this would be it. As imagined by the designer, downtown has no special effects, no trompe-l'œil, and no hubris. On the other hand, there was a hint of depression, a wonderfully paralytic mood usually represented by a mournful bassoon.

Just as Röntgen's wife saw her skeletal future in the x-ray of her hand, so Comey's models foreshadowed a thriftily sepulchral September.

The Lower East Side artist bent on purveying the hippest artistic vibe would applaud Comey's subtext: Daylight is for the birds. This artist would also smile at the collection's economy. A giant sweatshirt left behind by last night's overfed date lost its sleeves before being repurposed to cover a nightgown. A tablecloth was turned into a jumper and worn over a scavenged Persian green blouse.

No matter how one might feel about Paris, New York can be a bit of a letdown even as it gives way to deliverance, and, in Comey's case, culture shock. One can only dine on foie gras for so long before wanting a humble Saltine. The indigestion is soon soothed by the realization that New York is about individuality (and here, survival) in a way Paris could never be. Paris is about beauty and glamour, so much so that it can cease being beautiful and glamorous and wind up banal. Such is the plight of the overstuffed and the overly stimulated. One more forkful of Pommes Dauphin and the rationale of hitting the bum bin for your fall wardrobe suddenly becomes an exciting and vivifying possibility. Students and poets have been doing this for centuries, as have those who cling tenaciously to their indie cred even when well past an age where it is becoming or beneficial. The very best of these creative dressers have created new art forms. Their makeshift street styles have obviously influenced Comey, which is just about how things are supposed to happen. Not in ateliers or grands salons or in the first-class section of an Air France 747, but on the corner of Bowery and Bleecker.

So Comey doesn't indulge in joie de vivre. This makes her a brutal, soup-kitchen realist, even if she is still employing last year's beige lipstick trend. The Lower East Side is gentrifying at an alarming rate. Soon, the remaining artists will be forced out by megadevelopments and Whole Foods Markets. Manhattan is reaching the end of the line. That leaves the artist with New Jersey, which last I heard wasn't quite the same thing. Gentrifying does not automatically imply renewal. This was a quietly intuitive collection whose larger message will probably be overlooked. Points to Comey for recognizing how dire the situation really is.

Images: Style.com