Tales from the Back Row (4 page)

Luckily, while I waited, I bumped into Bryanboy, one of the original fashion bloggers who dresses quite fabulously and gets photographed at fashion nonsense all the time. I filled him in on my scheme and asked him what he thought I should wear to actually pull this off. Bryanboy had borrowed a few beautiful designer things, including the colorful top he was wearing, to wear to the shows. I remember him telling me he thought street-style dressing had ­become so
extreme
that only the absolute most cutting-edge of all clothing would make an impact on photographers in a given season, unless they al
ready knew you as a street-style celebrity. What is the most cutting-­edge apparel in all the land? Well, possibly couture—the world's most expensive, entirely handmade clothes, that only qualify as couture when they are actually certified by a French council. But there exists a league of clothes arguably even more cutting-­edge than couture, and that is next season's clothes. Meaning, the clothes we were seeing on the runways right
now
that wouldn't hit stores for average women to buy for another several months. I was beginning to despair. Dresses don't just go straight from a runway to my body because, again, I'm not Madonna. How would I turn myself into a street-style parody without doing something ­embarrassing like showing up wearing a coconut bra and leggings? It was the only way I might ever look street-style strange enough.

Just as Gurung finished his chat with Cathy, celebrity stylist and designer Rachel Zoe came bounding into the venue. Well, Rachel Zoe didn't have her name put on a list to go backstage, but I remember that she did seem to have free rein to run around wherever she wanted that season, devoid of the seven layers of badges, wristbands, and Hogwarts-level clearance the plebeians like me need to get backstage to do their work.

She wore a black suit with flared pants and a multistrand gold bracelet and her signature oversized dark sunglasses, with a QVC tag hanging around her neck (she was showing her QVC line that season and had to wear credentials for
that
, but not this). And, whereas badges were outfit death for most not-famous people, she was probably getting her face photographed off anyway. But that's what you get when you're a burgeoning icon with an iconic look and a Bravo show.

Gurung slipped away from Cathy to greet Zoe, who was in a big rush to get back to QVC. Zoe deserved his enthusiasm because
she helped make him a big deal by dressing her clients (Demi Moore, Kate Hudson) in Gurung's pieces when he was relatively unknown. Their love, as it manifested that day, is that of two people in a long-distance relationship who just want to do it as soon as they see each other. Zoe greeted Gurung with a slew of exclamations involving giggling and
OH MY GOD
s and lots of squealing. He did the same, they uttered each other's names orgasmically. Mid-embrace, Gurung lifted Zoe's lithe body off the ground, she wrapped her legs around his waist, and there was more giggling and shrieking and
displaying.
I enjoyed watching all this, though it had the collective effect of making me feel even less important than I already do, as I was being held by a few headsetted people in an area
away
from where the racks of clothes hung in clear plastic. Cathy and Rachel Zoe were allowed within the racks, but I was not, because I had been eating granola bars all morning like a child, and my hands were clearly unacceptably sticky and dangerous to the dresses! (Kidding, I would never let fashion people see me
eating
. What kind of person do you think I am?)

“Show me EVERYTHING!!!!” Rachel said in a fit of genuine excitement, as their hands fluttered, and Gurung began taking her from dress to dress on the racks. Zoe and Gurung progressed down the racks, with him explaining, her gasping and speaking with periods between all her words (“Oh. My. God. This. Is. So. Stunning. I. Can't. Even. Handle. The. Purple”). Everyone in the room acted like they weren't captivated by the exchange, but they totally were, and everyone's life at that moment revolved around it. Except maybe Cathy, who exchanged pleasantries with Rachel, though she didn't embrace her while lifting her body off the ground and so Rachel therefore didn't get the opportunity to wrap her legs around Cathy's waist. There is not a lot of
displaying
that goes
with this interaction, because when two women talk it's frowned upon to act as though they're in a day care center, but when a woman and a gay man talk, years of adult development and maturation can acceptably be tossed out the window.

In a few minutes, Rachel left, as though her presence were all just a montage in someone else's reality show. At this point, I was supposed to get to talk to Prabal, but it didn't happen because the models had to put in their runway dresses! Time waits for no man! (Except at Fashion Week, when it actually waits for all of them.)

A mass of slow-moving people entered the venue a few minutes before the show started: evidence of a major celeb walking among us. All I could see of this Famous One gracing us with her presence that day was a giant curly mass of yellow-and-pink cotton candy wig topped with a pillow-sized pink iridescent bow. The dramatically accessorized hair bobbed within a circle of giant security guards and various other people looking extremely purposeful. I figured it was Nicki Minaj, though someone in the crowd loudly asked, “IS THAT LADY GAGA?” Oh, the fool, mistaking the top of Nicki Minaj's head for Lady Gaga's! In a room full of fashion people! That was so embarrassing for him! I tweeted the errant remark immediately and it got more reactions than 90 percent of my other tweets combined that Fashion Week. For that, I would like to thank, deeply, the gay community.

After Nicki Minaj was seated and everyone who had left their seats to ogle her—thereby setting back the progress we'd made toward starting the show by about 60 percent—had been forced by security to sit down again, the show finally started more than half an hour late. As annoying as this is, it doesn't really matter since fashion shows have one-hour time slots, and the shows themselves take only a few minutes. Finally, I got to see what exactly had
been going on with all the colors and patterns hanging in the plastic wrap backstage.

That season, Gurung showed sheer pants dripping with purple metallic Latex, flirty dresses with mesh paneling where you'd expect to see a woman's underpants, and pretty floral-inspired prints. Some of these prints looked the way turquoise and floral wallpaper would look if you were high and stared at it too long. These things would definitely get me photographed. Too bad I was more likely to turn into a cat than be allowed to borrow them.

Everyone clapped, and Prabal came out onto the runway to receive his applause. Once the show wrapped, I got three minutes backstage to talk to the designer. Then everyone dashed off to their next show, except the people with especially good hair and expensive shoes and striking monochromatic pantsuits who decided to linger around to pose for street-style photographers while either waiting for their drivers or
pretending
to wait for their drivers so they could get attention. I would look so stupid trying to do this.

• • •

With a few days of Fashion Week left, I had nothing but the borrowed Miu Miu shoes to wear. My editor pulled me aside and got serious.

“You just have to make do with what we have,” she said. “Wear a white button-down and jeans, the Miu Miu shoes, Diana's bracelets, and red lipstick. Not a brick red, but
street-style
red. I'll loan you my Chanel purse.” I figured that anyone who owned her own Chanel purse knew what she was talking about. And Diana and I felt relieved we would no longer have to scramble trying to call in
all the clothes on hold for J. Lo or the other Fashion Week Bambis who might need them.

I dilly-dallied about getting the assignment done because I felt nervous about
trying
to be a street-style star. I felt comfortable operating as a behind-the-scenes member of this crazy scene. I always wanted to make it as a writer and editor. If ever I were to get attention from photographers, I envisioned that it would be warranted by my hard work and success, or moving into a position that made me inherently interesting enough to photograph, like most editors in chief. And quite frankly, I didn't want to court the attention. There's a quote I like from David Sedaris about his advice to aspiring David Sedarises that perfectly captures my issues with self-promotion: “I don't think pushiness helps at all. It's unbecoming and bespeaks a talent for self-promotion rather than for writing.” But marketing oneself is a vital part of the fashion industry, and you see this throughout popular fashion blogs—the most successful aren't necessarily the best, but they are expert promoters. If they weren't, they wouldn't get front-row seats at shows.

Somehow, I had gotten myself an assignment to do the exact thing I never thought I'd do. Still I had committed to getting the story, so I went home and tried to find street-style-y jeans and a stylish-enough white button-down. I grabbed a couple white shirts and a couple pairs of jeans and took them to the office the next day in a shopping bag. I had been told to style my hair wavy—you know, carefree and low maintenance like I didn't try at all. Because do not forget that the secret to being stylish is to look like you didn't try at all when you actually tried really fucking hard.

When I got to work on the appointed day, Diana and my editor examined the options and told me to wear paint-splattered boy
friend jeans that rolled up around the ankle with a crisp white shirt by +J (that's fancy for “from Uniqlo,” FYI) tucked in. I rolled up the sleeves a little bit and slipped on a bunch of Diana's bangles. I looked like I was wearing a rhinestone-studded Slinky by Juicy Couture on my arm. And just in case that wasn't extreme enough (because at this stage of street style, you could wear an oversized glittery clamshell from the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show around your entire torso and you would not look overdressed), I unbuttoned the top couple of shirt buttons to reveal what you might call a “statement choker” by Dannijo that was lying around the fashion closet. I wore Diana's lipstick, slung the black quilted Chanel purse over my arm, slipped into the towering Miu Miu glitter booties, added oversized black Prada glasses that I had once found in the back of a cab, and I was ready to go. I felt like a reality TV star who got dressed for the sole purpose of cruising through paparazzi. Look out, Fashion Week—another tacky bitch is on her way!

I convinced the magazine to hire a car for me for the day, because if I was going to get photographed as much as possible I would need to be in as many places as possible as quickly as possible—without ruining my look. And, despite Fashion Week having a centralized venue referred to as “the tents” where most shows are supposed to take place, two consecutive shows on my list of things to hit were at different addresses.

Since Fashion Week wouldn't be Fashion Week if there weren't constantly a new thing that's cooler than an older thing, new venues continually crop up. Some designers show at Milk, a photo studio located in the meatpacking district, a neighborhood that's become hip to the point of self-parody. The Chihuahuas that live over there dress even tackier than the Europeans who wear black stilettos and liquid leggings to wait two hours for champagne
brunch there every Saturday and Sunday. Around the corner from Milk you will also find the boutique Jeffrey, which is so absurdly Fashion it became a skit on
Saturday Night Live
.

Theoretically, when your show is not at the tents, it should be at Milk, but that's never the case because some designers, despite possessing the credentials and means to show in these places, get sponsored to show elsewhere or simply prefer something grander. Marc Jacobs shows without fail in the Lexington Avenue Armory, on the opposite side of town, because the space is gigantic and he can erect a runway within his own extravagant art installation. (For his fall 2011 show, for instance, he spent $1 million, possibly more, the
New
York
Times
reported, on a set that involved erecting walls of tufted vinyl, which company president Robert Duffy said, “only half-joking, was a padded cell”; the floor and benches were entirely mirrored; and each of the sixty-three models wore $180 worth of fake hair.) Alexander Wang likes to show in non–Mother Ship venues; since 2010, he has preferred the pier, usually on the very west, difficult-to-access side of Manhattan. It's possible he likes it because it looks like a big empty warehouse, and over the past eight years anyone in New York who wants to be cool makes sure a significant portion or aspect of their lives takes place in big, empty industrial spaces. The dingier and bigger and emptier the warehouse is, the cooler you are, hence the move of many hipsters from the gentrified parts of Brooklyn to the abandoned factory buildings to their east, that have no insulation in the walls, possibly no heat in the living quarters at all, and are about as comfortable to occupy in the winter as a bathtub lined with damp bedsheets. But Alexander Wang can show on his Chosen Pier that is out of everyone's way, a good distance removed from all the other shows because his clothes—the kinds of things people who live in warehouses and
also have money are supposed to wear if they want to live up to their reputation of dwelling in a warehouse—have become the biggest must-sees of New York Fashion Week.

So it was not snobbery to believe mass transit was not going to work. At the tail end of summer, when Fashion Week occurs, the subway feels like a steam room in a Dumpster, and subjecting one's skin to that does not aid in looking beautiful. Also, I'd be wearing uncomfortable shoes all day and I am a
pansy
about uncomfortable shoes. Besides, being driven around all day conveys an air of significance, and the most captivating street-style subjects embody this air. Given that my outfit was only mildly significant, the car was part of the costume, really.