Catwalk (pronounced kat-wawk)
(1) A
narrow walkway, especially one high above the surrounding area, used to provide
access or allow workers to stand or move, as over the stage in a theater,
outside the roadway of a bridge, along the top of a railroad car etc; any
similar elevated walkway.
(2) By
extension, a narrow ramp extending from the stage into the audience in a
theatre, nightclub etc, associated especially with those used by models during fashion
shows (although the gender-neutral “runway” is now sometimes used in preference
to “catwalk”).
(3) In
nautical architecture, an elevated enclosed passage providing access fore and
aft from the bridge of a merchant vessel.
(4) By
extension, as "the catwalk", industry slang for the business of
making clothes for fashion shows.
1874:
The construct was cat + walk. The use of
catwalk to describe a long, narrow footway was a reference initially to those
especially of such narrowness of passage that one had to cross as a cat walks. It applied originally to ships and then theatrical
back-stages, the first known use with a fashion show runway dating from
1942. In architecture on land and at
sea, the catwalk soon lost its exclusive association only with the narrow and
came instead to be defined by function, used to describe any walkway between
two points. The noun plural is catwalks. For both nautical and architectural purposes,
the English catwalk was borrowed by many languages including Norwegian
(Bokmål & Nynorsk) and Dutch and it’s used almost universally in fashion
shows. Some languages such as the Ottoman
Turkish قات use
the spelling kat and some formed the
plural as catz.
Cat (any
member of the suborder (sometimes superfamily) Feliformia or Feloidea):
feliform (cat-like) carnivoran & feloid or any member of the subfamily
Felinae, genera Puma, Acinonyx, Lynx, Leopardus, and Felis or any member of the
subfamily Pantherinae, genera Panthera, Uncia and Neofelise and (in historic
use, any member of the extinct subfamily Machairodontinae, genera Smilodon,
Homotherium, Miomachairodus etc, most famously the Smilodontini,
Machairodontini (Homotherini), Metailurini, "sabre-toothed cat" (often
incorrectly referred to as the sabre-toothed tiger) but now most associated
with the domesticated species (Felis catus) of felines, commonly and apparently
since the eight century kept as a house pet)) was from the Middle English cat & catte, from the Old English catt
(male cat) & catte (female cat),
from the Proto-West Germanic kattu,
from the Proto-Germanic kattuz, from
the Latin cattus.
Cat has
most productively been applied in English to describe a wide variety of objects
and states of the human condition including (1) a spiteful or angry woman (from
the early thirteenth century but now almost wholly supplanted by “bitch” (often
with some clichéd or imaginative modifier)), (2) An aficionado or player of jazz,
(3) certain male persons (a use associated mostly with hippies or sub-set of
African-American culture), (4) historic (early fifteenth century) slang for a prostitute,
(5) in admiralty use, strong tackle used to hoist an anchor to the cathead of a
ship, (6) in admiralty use, a truncated form of cat-o'-nine-tails (a multi-lash
(not all were actually nine-tailed)) whip used by the Royal Navy et al to
enforce on-board discipline), (7) in admiralty use, a sturdy merchant sailing
vessel (long archaic although the use endures to describe the rather smaller "catboat",
(8) as “cat & dog (cat being the trap), a archaic alternative name for the
game "trap and ball", (9) the pointed piece of wood that is struck in
the game of tipcat, (1) In the African-American vernacular, vulgar slang or
the vagina, a vulva; the female external genitalia, (11) a double tripod (for
holding a plate etc) with six feet, of which three rest on the ground, in whatever
position it is placed, (12) a wheeled shelter, used in the Middle Ages as a
siege weapon to allow assailants to approach enemy defenses, (13) in admiralty slang,
to vomit, (14) in admiralty slang to o hoist (the anchor) by its ring so that
it hangs at the cathead, (15) in computing, a program and command in the Unix operating
system that reads one or more files and directs their content to the standard
output (16) in the slang of computing, to dump large amounts of data on an
unprepared target usually with no intention of browsing it carefully (which may
have been a sardonic allusion of “to catalogue or a shortened form of
catastrophic although both origins are unverified, a street name of the drug
methcathinone, (17) in ballistics
and for related accelerative uses, a shortened form of catapult, (18) for
purposes of digital and other exercises in classification, a shortening of category,
(19) an abbreviation of many words starting with “cat”) (catalytic converter, caterpillar
(including as “CAT” by the manufacturer Caterpillar, maker of a variety of
earth-moving and related machines)) catfish, etc, (20) any (non
military-combat) caterpillar drive vehicle (a ground vehicle which uses
caterpillar tracks), especially tractors, trucks, minibuses, and snow groomers.
Walk
was from the Middle English walken (to
move, roll, turn, revolve, toss), from the Old English wealcan (to move round, revolve, roll, turn, toss) & ġewealcan (to go, traverse) and the Middle
English walkien (to roll, stamp,
walk, wallow), from the Old English wealcian
(to curl, roll up), all from the Proto-Germanic walkaną & walkōną (to
twist, turn, roll about, full), from the primitive Indo-European walg- (to twist, turn, move). It was cognate with the Scots walk (to walk), the Saterland Frisian walkje (to full; drum; flex; mill), the West
Frisian swalkje (to wander, roam), the
Dutch walken (to full, work hair or
felt), the Dutch zwalken (to wander about),
the German walken (to lex, full,
mill, drum), the Danish valke & waulk), the Latin valgus (bandy-legged, bow-legged) and the Sanskrit वल्गति (valgati) (amble, bound, leap, dance). It was related to vagrant and whelk and a doublet
of waulk.
Walk
has contributed to many idiomatic forms including (1) in colloquial legal
jargon, “to walk” (to win (or avoid) a criminal court case, particularly when
actually guilty, (2) as a colloquial, euphemistic, “for an object to go missing
or be stolen, (3) in cricket (of the batsman), to walk off the field, as if
given out, after the fielding side appeals and before the umpire has ruled;
done as a matter of sportsmanship when the batsman believes he is out or when
the dismissal is so blatantly obvious that the umpire’s decision is inevitable,
(4) in baseball, to allow a batter to reach first base by pitching four balls
(ie non-strikes), (5) to move something by shifting between two positions, as
if it were walking, (6) (also as “to full”, to beat cloth to give it the
consistency of felt, (6) in the slang of computer programming, to debug a
routine by “walking the heap”, (7) in aviation, to operate the left and right
throttles of an aircraft in alternation, (8) in employment, to leave, to resign,
(9) in the now outlawed “sports” of dog & cock-fighting, to put, keep, or
train (a puppy or bird) in a walk, or training area, (10) in the hospitality
trade, to move a guest to another hotel if their confirmed reservation is not
available at the time they arrive to check-in (also as to bump), (11) in the hospitality
trade, as “walk-in”, a customer who “walks-in from the street” to book a room
or table without a prior reservation, (12) in graph theory, a sequence of
alternating vertices and edges, where each edge's endpoints are the preceding
and following vertices in the sequence, (13) In coffee, coconut, and other
plantations, the space between the rows of plants (from the Caribbean and most
associated with Belize, Guyana &
Jamaica, (14) in orchids, an area planted with fruit-bearing trees, (15) in colloquial
use, as “a walk in the park” or “a cakewalk”, something very easily
accomplished (same as “a milk-run”) and (16) in the (now rare) slang of the UK
finance industry, a cheque drawn on a bank that was not a member of the LCCS (London Cheque
(check in the US) Clearance System), the sort-code of which was allocated on a
one-off basis; they had to be "walked" (ie hand-delivered by
messengers).
On the catwalk: Lindsay Lohan in a Heart Truth Red Dress during Olympus Fashion Week, Fall, 2006, The Tent, New York City.
How to walk
like catwalk model
Traci Halvorson of Halvorson Model Management (HMM) in San Jose, California, has written a useful guide for those wishing to learn the technique of walking like a catwalk (increasingly now called the gender-neutral “runway”) model. Although walking on a wide, stable flat surface, in a straight line with few other instructions except “don’t fall over”, doesn’t sound difficult, the art is actually a tightly defined set of parameters which not all can master. Some models who excel at static shots and are well-known from their photographic work can’t be used on a catwalk because their gait, while within the normal human range, simply isn’t a “catwalk walk”. It’s thus a construct, of clothes, shoes, style and even expression and catwalk models need to be adaptable, able to achieve essentially the same thing whether in 6-inch (150 mm) high stilettos or slippery-soled ballet flats; it’s harder than it sounds and as all models admit, nothing improves one’s technique like practice.
(1) The
facial expression. It sounds a strange
place to start but it’s not because if the facial expression is unchanging it
means it’s easier to focus on everything else, the rational being that humans
use their range of facial expression to convey emotion and attitude but this
all has to be neutralized to permit the photographers (paradoxically the
audience is less relevant) to capture what are defined “catwalk” shots. Set the chin to point slightly down though
don’t hang the head; the angle should be almost imperceptible and it
recommended to imagine an invisible string attached to the top of the head
holding the chin in its set position.
(2) Do
not smile. Catwalk models do not smile
because it draws attention away from the product although this does not mean
looking miserable or unhappy; instead look “serious” and this usually is done by
perfecting what is described as a “neutral” expression, one which would defy an
observer being able to tell whether the wearer is happy or sad. To achieve this, the single most important
aspect is to keep the mouth closed in a natural position, something like what
is recommended for a passport photograph and ask others to judge the look but
as a note of caution, there will be failures because some girls just look sort
of happy no matter what. In most of
life, this will be of advantage so a career other than the catwalk will beckon.
(3) On
the catwalk, keep the eyes focused straight ahead. This not only makes walking easier but also
self-imposes a discipline which will help maintain the static facial expression. Because the eyes are focused straight-ahead,
it will stop the head moving and the look will be the desired one of alertness
and purposefulness. Some models recommend
imagining a object moving in front of them and focus on that and in the
situations where there’s a procession on the catwalk, it’s possible usually to
fixate on some unmoving point on the model ahead.
(5) Don’t
fall over. It’s an obvious point but it
does happen and usually, shoes are responsible, either because the nature of
the construction has so altered the model’s centre of gravity or there's contact between footwear and some flowing piece of fabric, either one’s own or one in the
wake of the model ahead. There is no
better training to avoid “catwalk stacks” than to practice in a wide variety of
shoe types.
(5) If
possible, arrange a replica catwalk on which to practice, it need only to be a
few paces long and arranged so the walk is towards a full-length mirror. For side views, film using a carefully
positioned camera and compare the result with footage of actual catwalk models
at work. If possible, work in pairs or a
group because you’ll hone each other’s techniques but remember this is serious
business and criticism will need to be frank; feelings may need to be hurt on the
walk to the catwalk.
(6) Stand
up straight, imagining the invisible string holding the head in place being also attached to the spine. Keep the shoulders
back but not unnaturally so, posture needs to be good but not stiff or exaggerated
and a good posture can to some extent compensate for a lack of height. Again, this needs to be practiced in front of
a mirror and practice will improve the technique, the object being to stand
straight while looking relaxed and comfortable.
(7) Perfecting
the actual catwalk walk will take some time because, although it looks entirely
natural when done by models, it’s not actually the “natural” way most people
walk. To train, begin purely
mechanistically, placing one foot in front of the other and walking with (comfortably)
long strides, the best trick being to mark a line on the floor with chalk and imagine
walking on a rope, keeping one foot in front of the other, allowing the hips
slightly to move from side to side; the classic model look. With sufficient practice, what designers call
the model’s “strut” will evolve and in conjunction with the other techniques, there’ll
be a projection of assuredness and confidence.
(8) However,
the hips need symmetrically and slightly to move, not swing. Catwalk models are hired as platforms for
clothes within a narrow dimensional range and this includes not only the cut of
the fabric but also the extent it is required to move as the body moves and
motion must not be exaggerated. When
practicing this, again it’s preferable to work in pairs or groups.
How it's done. Catwalk models need to look good coming or going.
(9) Limit
the movement of the arms when walking. Let
the arms hang at the sides with the hands relaxed, the swing of the limbs
sufficient only to ensure the look is not unnaturally stylized and certainly
nothing like that of most people on the street.
Many report when first practicing that there’s a tendency for the hands
to clench into fists and that’s because of the discipline being imposed on
other body parts but from the start, ensure the hands are relaxed, loosely cupped and with a small (natural) gap (something like ¼ inch (5-6 mm) between the fingers.
Allow the arms slightly to bend and they’ll sway (just a little) with
the body.
(10) Practice
specifically for the occasion. Just as even
the best tennis players have to practice on grass if they’ve just come off playing on clay or hard-courts, at least an hour before an actual
catwalk session should be spent practicing in the same style of shoes as will
be worn for the session(s). This applies
even if wearing something less challenging like flats because the change in
weight distribution and the resultant centre of gravity is profound if the last
few days have been spent in 6 inch (150 mm) heels.
(11)
Practice with different types of music because the catwalk walk really is an
exercise in rhythm and if one can find a piece which really suits and makes the
walk easier to perfect, if it’s possible to imagine that while on the catwalk, that’s
good although sometimes there’s music at the shows and not all can focus on
what’s in the head while excluding what’s coming through the speakers.
Traci Halvorson's instructions were of course aimed at neophytes wishing to learn the basic technique but among established models there are variations and the odd stake of the individualistic, the most eye-catching of which is the "fierce strut", a usually fast-paced and aggressive march down the catwalk while still using the classic one-foot-in-front-of-the-other motif which so defines the industry. It's thus not quite Nazi-style goose-stepping or even the hybrid step used most enthusiastically by the female soldiers in the DPRK (North Korean) military but it's clearly strutting with intent.
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