A children's story for the times.

There was once a silly but very powerful fashion editor who only wore Balmain and Margiela and other fashion brands that're not designed by Karl Lagerfeld (officially, anyway. Everybody knows that Margiela and such are simply the old designs of Karl Lagerfeld that he threw out). She was French, yet she did not own much Chanel. Sometimes, she would walk by one of the little French cafes and the ladies who weren't acquainted with methods of Not Eating, would laugh at this very silly fashion editor.

"How come you don't wear Chanel, Carine?", they taunted.
"We thought you were French! French Girls wear Chanel!"

And so on they went; but Carine thought she was better than these ladies who actually ate food anyway, because she edited a fashion magazine that was read only by the goths that exist in the sewers of France, and American fashionistas who assume that their French counterparts read it (whilst in actual fact, the French fashionistas were too busy blowing their noses on Hermès scarves. There was a cold going around France at this point, you see.)

Now one day Carine was walking along a Very Fashionable Street, where she noticed that the Balmain t-shirt she was going to buy had been marked down to Nine Hundred and Fifty Dollars from one thousand dollars.

"Oh my!" she exclaimed in French. There must be a depression! Fashion must be collapsing! It's the end of the world as we know it!

So she went to her little offices, and told her staff:
THERE IS A LE DEPRESSION! ALERT ALL THE PAPERS!

The staff and herself marched down the Very Fashionable Street and met up with a photographer who took pictures of people for "Street Style".
"I am not a street urchin!" shouted Carine. "If you are going to take a picture of me, you better call it something else!....Like "Non-Street Urchin Style", or "Scary Cat People Style," or something."
"Who said I was going to take a picture of you?
"Well, really now. I'm the editor of French Vogue."
"..."
"DOT DOT DOT?! Is that all you can say....to that?"
"...?"
"KARL! YOU'VE USED THE DRAMATIC DEVICE OF DOT DOT DOT (AN ALLUSION TO THE WORK OF FRENCH WRITER COLETTE) BEFORE IN YOUR BLOG, YOU LAZY BASTARD!"
"Fine then. Oh my! How I am amazed to find myself in the presence of such a force of fashion! What can I do for you, scary person?"
"Well, you know that the world is collapsing?"
"No!"
"It is! I saw a Balmain t-shirt for only $950 today!"
"They don't have dollars in France."
"Most of our readership isn't French so it doesn't matter."
"Are you alluding to French Vogue, or Karl Lagerfeld's Guide to Life?"
"We're breaking the fourth wall a lot today, aren't we Gustav?"
"My name is not Gustav."
"Next we'll be calling you Estrogen."
"Are you sure it was only $950?"
"Yes! It's a sure sign of the oncoming depression."
"This is simply shocking!"
"It's a scandal!"
"It's an outrage!"
"We must go and tell more people!"
"We must go and tell King Karl!"

They gathered up all of Paris (even the homeless), and went to knock on King Karl's door.
"Hello", said Karl.
"There's a depression! There's a depression!"
"Who said?"
"Carine".
"I could help with this, hmm?"
"What do we have to do?" shouted the crowd of several million stylish Parisians.
"Actually, you're all too demode. I know a fable like this is meant to have some sort of moral, but you all just bore me."

At this point the sky fell. The crowd, once silent, kept shouting about the depression. Karl sighed and went back into his closet.