There’s a famous scene in Bruno where Sacha Baron Cohen interviews a catwalk model backstage at a fashion show. “It’s the hardest job in the world isn’t it?” he asks her mockingly. “You’ve got to remember, like, to put your right leg forward, and then your left leg forward, and then which one now? And then sometimes you even have to turn,” he says. The poor unsuspecting model agrees. “It’s very hard.”
My mind went back to that scene when I saw videos of celebrities walking the Miu Miu show at Paris Fashion Week. There was consummate cool girl Alexa Chung, blinking like a deer in headlights as she tottered down the runway. Rapper Little Simz followed, looking like she was walking to the firing squad, and then actress Hilary Swank, who swung her arms mechanically and wore a strange smirk. I noticed the way the actual models never blinked and turned like they meant it with a proper pivot rather than a half baked arc. I realised that the model in Bruno was right: strutting down the catwalk is hard, and should be left to the professionals.
