In the land where Gidgets roam, Don Juans loll and talk of Brazilian butt lifts is casual conversation, a friend of a friend introduces me to Ingrid Cesares, Madonna’s once best pal and the undisputed queen of Miami nightlife.

We’re poolside at the Raleigh Hotel, where the sun is spinning its gold and the sky is as unlined as a Hollywood actress. The whole scene is such an unrelenting cliché that I feel like a real-life musical note torn from Gloria Estefan’s song sheet. “Miami used to feel like living in the country,” Cesares is telling me, her eyes looking out from beneath that iconic lady-butch do of hers. She’s talking about the change in this town, which has jumped from geriatric to glamazon in the wink of an eye. “It’s New York, it’s L.A., it’s Miami,” she’s saying. “You know, these are the three major destinations when it comes to entertainment, nightclubs, fashion.”

Fashion, actually, is what has brought me here. In this part of America’s so-called Riviera, where people are known more for taking it off than putting it on, a new full-scale fashion week has landed at the chic Raleigh Hotel. There’s one key difference though. The shows here are all about swimwear – every last itsy-bitsy bit of it.

Swim Shows Miami, as the event is formally known, is a tough assignment. I have to spend days on end watching barely there models with straight-from-the-hammock smiles smouldering down runways. And with the swimsuit business being a multimillion-dollar affair, there’s enough choice to run the length of Ocean Boulevard: suits with zebra prints, suits with tiger spots (a pack of bathing suits that seem to have fallen straight out of an Animal Crackers box); thongs with appliqués; bikinis paired with trashy gold bling; buxom-revealing two-piecers with matching career-girl handbags; and because all the world’s a beach, lots of Kumbaya-my-Lord ethnic traces.

During the supersexy Inca show – a line that is Michael Kors-like in its sophistication – the sassy and vaguely bored-looking expensive chicks say everything there is to say about a woman’s fundamental Eve-like powers, all on a single catwalk. (It isn’t so much a catwalk as it is a sandbox and not so much a front row as low beach benches set up in a tent behind the Raleigh.) During the ultra racy-romantic Rosa Cha show, where the song “I Like It When It Rains” rings out ironically, I think about how you need nerves of steely self-preservation to watch such specimens of flawless DNA swish by. It’s the survival of the prettiest here, but who exactly are these superpeople who parade before me day in and day out with their perfect bottoms and missile-striking pecs? Well, actually, they’re mostly wait staff from Ocean Boulevard, as one keen spectator points out to me. (“He works at the Delano,” he says, pointing to a guy who looks like a Cabana Boy because – guess what? – he is a Cabana Boy!)

Bikini-itis sets in after about day three of this Olympic ogling session. After a while, everybody looks like a good, clean-fun Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island, a Lolita-despite-herself Phoebe Cates from Fast Times at Ridgemont High or a heat-spreading “I’ll-screw-you-and-then-take-all-your-money” Ursula Andress from Dr. No. And, in a way, it’s boring. Too much beauty after a while has a way of inducing esthetic anesthesia.

What’s also interesting is how Miami is quietly finger-crossed about this new annual swimwear shindig. It’s because this oceanside playland has never been a player in high fashion circles. Barring the spectre of Sonny Crockett in his Miami Vice pastels and sandals, it doesn’t really count, despite what Ingrid Cesares says. Most of the important editors from the New York glossies have, in fact, given the whole affair a pass. They’re playing wait and see. Like most cities and many big fashion houses that are continually trying to rebrand and rebound in order to attract new buyers and media attention, Miami is caught up in the high-wire act of trying to be more than the party town that it’s known to be.

It’s trying to be a fashion hub, and it’s going to do it one thong at a time. 

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Shinan Govani is the Scene columnist for the National Post and frequently appears on television commenting on celebrities and the social whirl. Write him at sgovani@enroutemag.net.