Models Fall Through Fashion Week. Dangerous Job?

At Dennis Basso's show this week, a model took a major tumble

It's been a bad seven days for a handful of models at New York Fashion Week. At least six designer shows were overshadowed by slips, trips and spills on the catwalk. Naeem Khan, Richard Chai and Y-3 and all featured surprise mis-steps. But the biggest falls caught on film, were on Dennis Basso's runway and at Heart Truth's Red Dress Collection celebrity show, where both Christie Brinkley and Rose McGowan lost their footing.

The rule of the thumb is to pick yourself up, laugh it off and cry later, but some models have started avoiding the risk altogether.

A few years back, three women turned down the chance to walk in GaGa's Armadillo platforms at an Alexander McQueen show. The likelihood of tumbling in those oddly shapped 10-inch heels wasn't worth the risk to model Abbey Ley Kershaw. "Hopefully [heel height] is going to come back down soon because health and safety regulations have got to come into play at some point," she said back in 2009.

But, in the past three years not much has changed. The ability to walk an invisible tightrope in draping fabric and foot stilts is still a requirement of the job. Inevitably slips happen, though some runway shows are perennial disaster areas.

"I can tell you I've seen models fall mostly at Herve Leger," says Fashionista's Executive Editor Leah Chernikoff. "The dresses are so tight and the floors are so slippery, it's model dominos." In 2009, the brains behind the band-aid dresses, came under scrutiny after four models fell down in one show; however none of the models reported serious injuries.

Conspiracy theorists wonder if some designers aim for a tumble. It's those candid moments captured on camera that grab attention from news outlets and get replayed in the greatest hits version of each season's fashion week.

On the flip-side, it doesn't speak well for a look, when a trained professional can't wear it for twenty seconds with out falling.

Meet the 22-Year-Old Who Owns a $88 Million Crash Pad in NY

Ekaterina Rybolovleva, daughter of a Russian billionaire, made headlines with her new home in the Big Apple.

You may have heard that a Russian billionaire, Dmitry Rybolovleva, who made his fortune in fertilizer, bought his daughter a New York City apartment for $88 million. So who is this lucky duck? From what we can find out, the mysterious Ekaterina Rybolovleva is 22 years old, and doesn’t even live in the Big Apple.

The Russian heiress does, however, live in the U.S. where she studies at an “undisclosed U.S. university” --  the New York Post says Harvard -- but nothing’s confirmed.

The blonde beauty, now the proud owner of New York’s priciest crash pad, has stayed out of the spotlight. A serious equestrian (who could probably stash a horse or two in the 6,437 square foot penthouse with 10 rooms and a wrap-around terrace) she competes at  trials across Europe. Although the horsewoman was born in Russia, she has spent the last 15 years mainly in Switzerland and Monaco.
 

And, in the rare instance she does hole up in her tony 15 Central Park West address, she can always borrow a cup of sugar from one of her neighbors in the post building, like Sting, Denzel Washington and head of Goldman Sachs Lloyd Blankfein.