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All anyone can talk about lately is food–stuffing, mashed potatoes and turkey–so I thought I’d assemble a list of great, memorable moments in fashion and eating.
Then I realized that the fashion industry isn’t really known for its… eating… moments. So it occurred to me that most times fashion and food unite, stupid things happen.
One of the stupid moments of food and fashion together?
The Fashion Cafe.
The eatery launched in 1992 as a joint venture between supes Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer, and Elle Macpherson. It was supposed to be the fashion industry’s answer to Planet Hollywood, with all the wall clutter memorabilia and unremarkable cheeseburgers that go along.
And wouldn’t you know, the Fashion Cafe–its various international outposts–shuttered not many years after because no one wants to eat unremarkable cheeseburgers, fish and chips, or shrimp scampi under the glare of looped runway footage featuring impossibly thin supermodels.
To commemorate this memorably stupid moment in fashion and food, I’m excerpting Ruth Reichl’s review of the eatery’s Rockefeller Plaza location that ran in the New York Times Diner’s Journal, April 1995.
On one level, Fashion Cafe is just another theme-park restaurant with an animated environment and a store on the side. In the restaurant, lights flash, movies play and cases display dresses, coats and shoes worn by its owners, Claudia Schiffer, Elle MacPherson and Naomi Campbell and by a few of their friends. In the store, visitors can buy shirts, hats and jackets. (One leather jacket is $1,500.) As at all theme-park restaurants, there’s a line.
After waiting an hour for lunch on Monday, I had seen so many skinny people in form-fitting clothes that my appetite disappeared.
Way to sum it up, Reichl.
So: pour a Coke Zero on the sidewalk for Fashion Cafe and enjoy all the calories this Thanksgiving!
As a kid, i was obsessed with Hard Rock Cafe — I know I’m not the only one who collected all those T-shirts, right? I went to Fashion Cafe once, I think on a Girl Scouts trip to NYC, and I bought a black baby T that I loved. I think tween girls (and their parents) are really the only demographic that enjoyed Fashion Cafe. Then those girls grew up and the next wave of tween girls cared more about NSYNC and Britney Spears than Claudia, Naomi and Elle.