The most absurd literary event of the year just occurred. Chanel officially ended the post-Cold War by hosting a fashion show in Cuba. Why is this literary? Because it doesn’t make sense as history.
It would have been cool if the Chanel show had somehow rolled its eyes at the repression that precluded the existence of new cars, new buildings. Instead, it glorified the old cars, old buildings: a nationwide communist choke presented as vintage chic. Not one single thread of irony to mitigate the brute, boot-heel of the beret/boot brute.
The moccasins were great, yeah. But did they have to be presented in a march across the West’s still bleeding twin of Tiananmen Square?