Do you ever get so fed up with the vanity fair atmosphere of Fashion Week that you wish the whole thing would just go up in smoke?  That's the prayer of many industry insiders, and it looks like their wish might come true.

Why would divine wrath come down upon Bryant Park?  The unholy presence of two Paris Hiltons? 

Close, but not quite.  It all comes to down to one little word that some fear is a Satanic snare:

Astrology. 

As the New York Times chronicles in its Fashion Diary, an obsession with star power rules the major prophets of couture, as designers seek diviners from Justine Kenzer to Starsky & Cox, whose bestselling Sextrology is "the bible du jour at Colette." 

So the moon is in the Schouler house and Jupiter's aligned with Kors, but does this mean the dawning of the age of Aquarius?

The Times is skeptical--it ascribes the waxing faith in stars to an "overall tentativeness" born out of fashion's "dicey" prospects.  Astrology may reflect a hunger for certainty and meaning, the article opines, but it does so through a "loopy" hodge-podge of arcane symbols and postmodern pop mythology.

The Bible--the Hebrew one, not Colette's--offers a more dire prophesy of what lies in wait for astrological artistes:

Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame . . . .  (Isaiah 47:13-14)

Yikes!  Is there any hope for salvation in the Blingdom of God?

As illustrated by the accessories above, figures from astrology flourish in design. This is perhaps to be expected, since the spiritual union of astrology and fashion flows from the same source as religious ritual or belief in a divine plan:  our innate fascination with the forces that shape us and the patterns they create. 

Whether astrology is sinful or sublime I leave to the conscience of each fashion saint.  For now, I simply invite you to meditate on this:  if "the heavens declare the glory of God," perhaps it's inevitable that so many people look to them for guidance.