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PARIS, January 22, 2003

By Sarah Mower

It was a scene. Packed into a kitsch pink Paris nightclub, the throngs of Philip Treacy fans—including Valentino and his entourage, the milliner's muse, Isabella Blow, and her entourage—quaffed gin cocktails, posed for pictures and waited for the happening. Eventually, Naomi appeared with a can of Campbell’s soup on her head (get it?). It was punning and pop art all the way, as models took turns at a bit of amateur pole dancing while Treacy’s jokes quivered on their craniums.

The homage to Warhol began with the literal: stacks of Brillo boxes, a banana, and 2-D-cutout images of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Liza Minnelli and Tina Chow. The show got funnier—and cleverer—as he stretched the idea to include a gallery of today’s pop icons: David Beckham, Kate Moss, Joan Collins and Calvin Klein’s pinup hunk Travis. There were moments of pure fashion fantasy, too, like a head completely submerged in a cloud of multicolored airborne butterflies, and a white feather poised on Alek Wek’s forehead like some unidentified jungle insect.

But the show ended, as it began, in laughter, when Treacy sent out a doubly self-referential hat: a miniature version of the pink Plexiglas satellite frequently worn by Blow—complete with a photo of her attached to the hat. Across the room, naturally enough, the real-life Blow was sporting exactly the same thing.