Hoping for a seat close to the catwalk, until the inevitable disappointment follows

A documentary like an opera, with birds of paradise as characters and the Parisian fashion weeks as a backdrop. For Fashion Babylon (AvroTros) Italian director Gianluca Matarasse followed three influencers who try to conquer a place in the fashion kingdom of Paris. The fashion show, one of them says, is a ritual. Just like in seventeenth-century courts, there are unwritten rules about who can sit where and next to whom. Which courtier is the most powerful, most famous and richest? These three are none of those, they rely on their outrageous attire to enter the shows and hope for a seat close to the catwalk. The documentary unfolds in three acts, with music following the storyline. Baroque and pompous in the heyday of these fashion addicts. Dark and dramatic as the inevitable disappointment ensues and one of the three leaves paradise in a taxi.

Yes, can I immerse myself in something without farmers and citizens? The television was not on Tuesday evening or she was sitting at the table again. Caroline van der Plas of BBB, this time with Khalid & Sophia. And we already knew where the evening would end: on a farm in Zwartsluis. On 1 (EO) went on the farm again for a broadcast. Just like last year, a complete talk show studio was built on location from the application center in Ter Apel, this time next to the De Weerribben nature reserve in Overijssel.

What are you?” is the first question that director Matarasse asks Casey Spooner, half-naked in a black cloak that he spreads like a feather: Not who, but what. The answer is vague and puzzling: “What I want to be is what I am.” He wants to be famous, but in such a “cool way” that not everyone knows him, but only the right people. That will then be the 37 viewers who follow his live stream during Paris fashion week. He is flanked by the twenty years younger Violet Chachki. Drag queen, once winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Together they deliver themselves to a tangle of eager photographers. They display their looks and bodies for free, hoping for more and better.

Michelle Elie, the former model, lives for (and by) her penchant for fashion. She bought the highlight of her outfits straight from the catwalk, a highly unique creation by the Japanese designer of Comme des Garçonnes herself. In that dress, big and white as a cloud cover, she can meet the designer backstage. Face to face with this Rei Kuwakubo, she doesn’t even get a smile. Michelle Elie sheds one tear and then recovers, she knows exactly what she is. Like fashion, a “disposable product”, out as quickly as it was in.

Casey Spooner has his last money printed T-shirt and caps. He is the first queer person to run for president of the United States. “Everything that is conceivable is possible.” Violet leaves Paris disillusioned after spending fourteen hours in full regalia waiting for a ‘fitting’. He would walk in Jean Paul Gaultier’s farewell show. Oh no, not at all.

Bunch of provincial politicians

Meanwhile in the cowshed of the Spans family, organic dairy farmers. On straw bales: farmers, forest rangers, nature managers and a professor. A bunch of provincial politicians in between. Behind the fences this time curious cows, they occasionally bellowed loudly, but without regard to persons. Giovanca Ostiana and Tijs van den Brink led the conversation tightly, so that it quickly became clear that the nature problem is not just a farmers’ problem, but a people’s problem. The farmer summed it up nicely: the consumer who votes green must show his colors and also do green shopping.

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