Why Heatherette Canceled Their Show: Our ReasonsWe love, love, love Heatherette — even though their show is a glamorous debacle every year, and even though we’re not always sure where to buy their clothes. Traver Raines and Richie Rich, the house’s creative team, are nice, fun, energetic, and brilliant. Every season their train wreck of an exposition is the highlight during Fashion Week. That’s why we are hit hard by the news that they won’t be showing this February. They were supposed to show at Roseland Ballroom this year, too, which would have meant that everyone could have come, and the after-party would have been glorious. We’re trying to find out why they’ve bailed (they “prefer not to comment,” but we’ll get it out of them — we run with the same gays, after all), but in the meantime, we’ve compiled a top ten list of reasons they might have called off the show:
1) They’re only doing a “Cruise” collection this year.
2) They, like so many other small fashion houses, fell victim to great glitter shortage of 2008.
3) The only chaps they could find had asses.
4) Tinsley ate something.
5) Boy Meets Boy went back on the air.
6) A six-foot-eight drag queen has Richie and Traver locked up in a basement somewhere in the Village because she didn’t get into their last fashion show, even though she WAS INVITED.
7) Lady Bunny ate Lydia Hearst. Totally kidding. She flossed with her.
8) Someone actually wanted to buy something from last season’s show, and they had to figure out how to make it again.
9) Richie broke an axle. On his roller skate.
10) Their Amanda Lepore popped.
Heatherette Cancels Fashion Show [Fashionista]
party lines
Traver Rains Loves Him Some Cow BallsAll this time we thought that Traver Rains’s ever-present cowboy hat was just an affectation. It turns out that the silent half of fashion-design duo Heatherette — maybe he just can’t get a word in when partner Richie Rich is around? — is a real Marlboro man. “I grew up in Montana on a cattle ranch,” Rains told us at the Lunchbox Auction at Saatchi & Saatchi on Thursday. Really? Does he know how to, like, rustle or wrangle or whatever one does to cattle? “Rope. Yeah,” he said, all Heath Ledger–like. “I spent more time on a horse than not, growing up. I was Brokeback before Brokeback was cool.” One of the specialties that ranchers rustle up around the campfire, Rains says, is Rocky Mountain oysters. And those are? “It’s fried cow balls. After they’re snipped,” Rains told us, covering his mouth and giggling coyly. We were, for once, speechless. “Um, they’re like, fried, breaded, um, you know the things hushpuppies! That’s what they remind me of.” Alas, Rains moved to New York in 1999 and has not eaten Rocky Mountain oysters since. He doesn’t know of a place that serves them in the city. “That would be fun,’ he said. “I would love to take my friends out and torture them with that.” —Bennett Marcus
Related: We can solve this problem! Where to Get Cow Balls [Grub Street]