(*Originally Publish on April 26, 2004)



One would think or rather expect that fashion journalists and critics would have a rich vocabulary replete with delightful adjectives, similes and metaphors. Not true as I recently learned.

Two days after the March 2004 read-to-wear shows ended in Paris, I was having lunch at L’Avenue with two beautiful women of a certain age from my first university, Morehouse College. Being on holiday here in the city of lights, they were thrilled at the arrival of a renowned American fashion journalist. They could not believe that they were dining in the same restaurant with a person who is both figuratively and literally one of the biggest men in the history of contemporary fashion.

Upon seeing him, I could only shake my head as a citation from Edgar Allen Poe came to mind, “By the twitching of my thumb, something wicked this way comes.” And indeed come my way, it did and sat only a few meters from my table.

Due to the close proximity, my group and I were unfortunately forced to hear a great deal of his and of his entourage’s conversation. And what struck me as strange and also pathetic was this journalist’s caricatured overuse of the word “FABULOUS”.

Yes I know that we all love the British series that made that word indispensable in the fashion industry, but come on! Saying it every 60 to 90 seconds was really a bit too much. And this from a former editor-in-chief of a Condé Nast publication!

That compelled me to come to terms with one of life’s gruesome little realities: not all journalists are blessed with a sickening vocabulary replete with colourful adjectives, adverbs, similes and metaphors. So I have decided to help my fellow colleagues.

Microsoft’s Word 2000 program proposes the numerous synonyms as alternatives to the word fabulous. They are sensational, wonderful, tremendous, magnificent, amazing, remarkable, extraordinary and marvellous. I rather ag...

1 2