A ‘show fart’ is something I have experienced on more than one occasion. In fact, I have certainly let one go during an opening look, because it happens. It doesn’t sound traditionally glamorous, I’ll give you that, but sometimes a man in a suit or a woman in her Lucian Matis gown or Chloe Comme Parris jumpsuit needs to ease the tension, expelling an aroma that is not only unpleasant, but distracting. It is the olfactory equivalent of a flashmob.
Last night at the Rudsak show, it happened. I don’t know if it is the juice cleanses people are on, but I was having trouble breathing. Sometimes people take precautions for instances like this–like my friend, who will go unnamed, who got me to purchase her some GasX prior to a show last week. Except not everyone thinks ahead, which leads to the festering stench of black olives and a freshly fired handgun left smoking on the factory floor of a sulphur mill. With each look, my nose twitches, and the top notes enter my nasal cavity as I write “revisit your boner scale later, someone farted again.”
The invisible fart hand then props your mouth open, begging to enter so you can taste it. The flavour is reminiscent of a Subway sandwich with too many pickles–the moment you realize that you like pickles, but your sandwich artist has interpreted that to be some next-level liking. That moment where your mouth can only identify sour. It’s distracting, because looking up at the details of an outfit leave you vulnerable, your nose turned up ever-so-slightly, open for entry.
And you can’t move. That’s the gauche thing to do, because you would ruin the photos people are getting paid to take, and you’d take away from the show you are there to see. So, you sit, cocooned in methane gas, and chew on a piece of gum, hoping the stale piece of minty gum you’re chewing will somehow unlock a flavour crystal that will transport you atop the Rocky Mountains, where farts don’t smell and the light is natural. Where fashion looks better, smells better.
That’s when you realize you’re focusing more on your gum chewing and the complex bouquet of show farts than the show you were there to see.
As someone who has had gas, and will no doubt have gas again, I completely understand the impulse to relieve yourself at any cost. I just wish it didn’t smell so bad when I was looking at pretty clothes.
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Kevin Naulls is a Toronto-based writer and former editor of The Goods and The Hype at Torontolife.com. Follow him on Twitter @kevinjn.
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