14 DAY TRIAL // You would think that Fashion Week is all about fashion but, this year, the New York edition marked a first by introducing a show on plastic surgery, with former patients in lieu of models.
Entertainment Tonight had access to the show and backstage, as the video below will confirm.
Dr. Ramtin Kassir says that the aim of the show was to prove to the world that, when done right, plastic surgery is totally worth it and recommendable as well.
To do that, he brought some of his clients to walk the runway for him, showcasing jobs ranging from facelifts and nose jobs, to liposuction, Botox, and fillers, all of them estimated at many thousands of dollars.
Dr. Kassir calls his “Faces of Beauty” show the “Anti-Hollywood,” in the sense that no woman he ever operated on came out looking overdone, as is the case with some celebrities who go overboard with these procedures and the result is very unnatural.
“My patients look phenomenal. You would never know they had anything done. We are saying, ‘This is the New York look. It’s not the Hollywood look. It’s not overdone’,” Dr. Kassir argues.
While that may be the case, whether showcasing his work at NYFW was a good idea or not is an entirely different kind of fish.
Fern Mallis, who is credited as founder of the event, thinks that plastic surgery doesn’t have a place in a conversation about fashion.
“Fashion week is about fashion – what editors and buyers will be covering and putting in the stores. It’s not for people to decide on what facelift to get. There is no place in Fashion Week for a runway show of plastic surgery,” he tells the Daily Mail.
There is also the question of how an event of this kind could impact on women’s self-esteem and body image.
“I don’t think it’s a very good example for young women to associate fashion with plastic surgery. Fashion should be about expressing yourself and not needing to fit into a certain image or a certain size,” Jennie Engelhardt says for the same publication.
Then again, as one of Dr. Kassir’s patients says, as long as they’re happy, “who cares.”
