busker

Go Hilfiger

The cruelest Cut

So entranced am I by Ordway 2nd-graders'
Otter Tales, I come late to the New York Times Business section where, on page 7, the pictures editor has played a cruel joke by running a picture of a businessman whose only crime is to resemble a somewhat wizened simian.

But God moves in mysterious ways and His Mercy is infinite.

To beautiful people like us, He gives the gift of penury so as to be ever about, scrabbling for income and sharing our good looks with the rest of the world. To the hapless singe d'affaires pictured above (his mocking lieutenants smirking in the back ground), he gives skill in commerce so that he may amass his fortune in blessèd privacy, away from pointing fingers and cruel jibes of the populace.

But tiens! - What is this I read? The unfortunate-featured recluse is named as one Thomas Hilfiger, a seamster of repute now hoodwinked into hosting some trumpesque "reality" show on the ermine coat-tails of The Donald.

Even its name bodes no boot - The Cut - inviting every possible doomer pun.

Starting June 9, it boasts the definitive kiss-of-death ingredients.

• A bevy of wannabe designers vie to please our clothier quasimodo in duelling "style assignments"
• The incestuous guest list will draw from TH's "circle of Hollywood friends", including pony-tailed zombie, Karl Lagerfeld (whose company Hilfiger has just bought)
• Yawn-producing buzzwords abound: the 'casting' will be "ethnically diverse", i.e. the convex posterior of Jennie Lopez will at point be waddling into view.
• First riveting assignment? Create a billboard for - c'mon, guess - Hilfiger.

It will crash, Mr Hilfiger will return to his pin cushion, and the waters will close over this misbegotten venture without the lightest eddie in the lapping of the waves.