Tales from the Back Row (6 page)

Once back in my chauffeured town car, I took off my shoes and put my feet up on the backseat. I peeled off my choker and bangles and put my hair up. My day of street-styling was over, and I was headed back to my office, feet afire with pain.

The attention was addictive, I will admit. It's the kind of validating rush you might get dancing all sexy-like at a concert or a club, and you wind up on a pedestal or the jumbotron, and you feel as though the crowd surrounding you is paying homage to your incredible cool hotness. But ultimately, once you're on that jum
botron you have to keep up appearances, otherwise you're out. And keeping up appearances is fucking exhausting. I could never be the kind of person who could: (1) dress this stylishly every day, (2) afford to dress this stylishly every day (the sum of my bag and shoes had to have been around $6,000), and (3) tolerate the discomfort of dressing like this every day. I concluded I was better off wearing my own off-trend $40 jeans and hoodie, hidden behind my cubicle half-wall or my seat in the very last row at a fashion show. Being the invisible kind of blogger has its perks, one of them being blister-free feet.

I had to put on my shoes to get from the car to the building, but once I got in the elevator, my feet hurt so much that I couldn't take it. And so I did something that I have vowed, after nights out at too many nightclubs full of drunk women, never to do: I took off my shoes in public. Standing on the cold floor of the elevator was divine. Once to my floor, I limped several steps down the hallway toward my desk before bumping into Diana.

“Jesus Christ, dude,” she said, slightly horrified by how I'd washed ashore after my day.

“I can't walk,” I said. “Can you call in a walker for me?”

“Definitely not till after Fashion Week,” she said, coming over to relieve me of the shoes, looking concerned but mostly amused as I hobbled back to my desk. I felt like the girl clawing her way out of the TV in
The Ring
: scary, gross-looking, covered in well grime, but also powerful. It topped dragging myself out of my old
Jewcy.com
job with a far worse beaten-down feeling years ago. And it made me incredibly thankful to have a job that involves sitting at a desk in jeans and flats most of the time instead of having to parade about in clothing that should come with a gym membership.

A stylist and/or personal-style blogger and/or person with eight billion Instagram followers I would never be, that much was certain. Writing about them, however, was a sheer delight. And now that I knew what they were up against every day, I could approach it with newfound empathy. Which, theoretically, should help me get through Fashion Week.

2

Trendsetters

the tale of the designer sweatpants i bought when i was stoned

H
ere's a downside to dressing so close to the cutting edge that you sometimes look insane: people who exist outside the fashion world—in other words, basically everyone—won't “get” you.

Once my attempt to be Fashion, outside of my street-style experiment, almost threatened my relationship with my boyfriend.

It all began, as these things often do, at a sample sale.

A sample sale is where labels mark down unsold merchandise and sample garments—the items that get loaned out to magazine editors and hang in showrooms for buyers from stores. At a sample sale, you can get designer things not for cheap necessarily (it's not Forever 21—they're not giving it away), but you're often looking at Madewell prices. For women who work in fashion, many of whom are not born rich and don't make the mid-six-figure salaries you'd need to wear designer things all the time, the sample sale is
essential. Some are quite popular: at Prada's seasonal sample sale, people line up around the block like it's the day before Thanksgiving at the airport. (Airports terrify me. The shoe removal, the four-dollar water, the gelatin-based Chinese buffets, the slow-­moving lines you have to wait in for everything, and, worst of all, the need amid all this chaos to be
on time
for something. I just can't.) The anxiety feels similar at sample sales, where everyone's trying to be in the door first to get the good shoes and you often have to check your bag on arrival. For this reason, I avoid day one of most “hot” sales, and go on the last day, when they mark things down even more in an effort to get rid of them. The good thing about this strategy is that while I might miss out on some of the “better shit,” I feel less guilty about spending money on the ridiculous stuff that ends up left over at these things.

One summer when I was working at the Cut, my friend James and I were sunning on the roof deck of my apartment building with my trustiest summer companion, a beach towel by the House of Deréon, Beyoncé and her mom's clothing line. (It had been sent to me as part of a “summer survival kit” that also included a Beyoncé T-shirt and a Beyoncé DVD-CD combo, making for unquestionably the best package I ever received as a member of the press.) Because I have no plans to run for political office and everyone knows books are the places to reveal these things: this was an occasion on which I smoked pot.

Soon enough, after a few puff-puff passes, we decided it was time for a treat.

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” I asked James.

“Jamba Juice.”

And so I threw on shorts and a tank top over my bikini, and we ventured into the world.

On the train to SoHo, it hit me that Jamba Juice wasn't SoHo's sole premiere attraction this afternoon. “James! We have to go to the Alexander Wang sample sale!” I had been following the sale's progress on Racked, a shopping website that updates New Yorkers on the stock available at sample sales. If I learned anything going to his Fashion Week shows, it was that young women in New York City could be made instantly hip by owning a piece of Wang. Plus, being stoned, I knew I could handle the deep-seated shopping ­anxiety I would surely face otherwise.

When James and I went to the sale stoned in our beach clothes, it wasn't how it is now. Now it's like going to Fashion Week: street-style photographers congregate outside to shoot the hordes of narrow-hipped women who show up in asymmetrical black clothes and dark sunglasses and seem to always be secretly looking one another up and down, as though in competition over just existing.

No, in those days, the sale was just a bare room, racks and bins of clothes, and young fashion people hoping to find something slightly cooler than usual to wear to work.

Once we arrived, I was pretty high. It had not occurred to me that I might see people I know and work with (but see above re: high). As soon as we walked in, we saw our friend Diana, my coworker and style sage.

“Hiii!” I said. “We were just
laying out
. That's why I'm wearing my
bathing suit
. Anything good here?”

James was already off in a zone, pilfering the racks.

“Yeah, so I'm getting this top,” Diana said, “and maybe this dress—”

“
Ooh,
SWEATERS!” I got distracted and drifted toward a rack of cardigans. I pulled a silver silk-paneled cashmere one off the
rack along with a knee-length blue shimmery one. I started trying them on over my clothes.

“James! Lookie! This is like a
cape
!” I looked at the prices taped to the walls. “Ooh these are each eighty dollars. I dunno . . .”

“Get it,” James said with the utmost certainty. “Just get it.”

James is an attractive gay Asian hipster who has legs for days and can pull off any item of clothing in the world. I've seen him roll up to dinner looking incredible in a SeaWorld windbreaker and neon pink fanny pack across his chest. I trust his advice implicitly not only because he always looks fantastic but also because, when it comes to getting dressed, we both love the unexpected, the weird. He's spontaneous and impulsive in the same way I am, and not just when it comes to five-dollar smoothie purchases.

I went back to flipping through the racks. “What are you getting?”

“I want a
onesie
,” he said, again with the utmost certainty. He pulled a thermal white, fitted jumpsuit off the rack.

“
That?
” I said.

“Imma try it on,” he said, moving toward a mirror on the wall. There were no fitting rooms, so he had to change in front of everyone.

He pulled this, what I can only describe as a unitard, over his feet and up his legs. It was a lot tighter than it looked on the hanger—like leggings but for the entire body.

Diana came by again.

“Oh, hey, we're leaving,” she said, barely registering that James was now wearing a white cotton body stocking.

“I'm gonna get it!” James said. I, now even more high, was laughing at James uncontrollably.

“You're getting that?” she said to him, straight-faced.

“What are you going to wear it with?” I asked.

“I'm gonna dye the bottom. Dip-dye. So it looks like pants. And I'm gonna wear it out. Everywhere. In Brooklyn.”

“You are going to dip-dye that onesie? Really?” I said. I am too lazy to fold my socks 99 percent of the time, much less dip-dye or DIY
anything
. I haven't made anything that's not edible for my own personal pleasure since I owned Play-Doh.

“It's easy. I'll just dip the feet in a bucket. I can do it.”

“Get it anyway. It's hilarious,” I said.

Once I had regained composure, I noticed we had wedged ourselves into a corner with one of the few remaining racks that was stuffed with clothing. All of it sweatpants.

“Wait, should I get . . . sweatpants?” I picked up a light blue pair and held them up to my waist.

“Hot. Yes,” James said.

“Where would I wear them?”

“To work. Da club. Everywhere.”

“Can I do that?” I wondered.

“
Yes
, boo. You work in fashion. You
need
Alexander Wang sweatpants,” he said.

Did I really need designer sweatpants? I wanted them in the moment, that's for sure. And when I saw them on his runway in shades of pink and blue, worn by models who had either been slicked with oil or misted with water to look like they had just walked out of a steam room, I thought—all of us there thought—
That is cool.
They were a runway trend. An off-couch, real-life trend, no. A runway trend: yes. Plus, Alexander Wang became the coolest of everything cool in 2008 because he could articulate the look of a rich hipster better than the rich hipsters themselves. He
proved his genius to the fashion community after he showed a whole collection styled with ripped tights in the runway show that made me realize, when I was just starting at the Cut, that I knew zero things about fashion. And then he followed it up with sweatpants, and people absolutely did not know what to do with themselves. Maybe it was just exciting for the coolest designer in New York to give us permission to wear comfortable bottoms. Elastic waistbands.
Eating
clothes. Or maybe he was just fucking with us to see if we'd go for it.

I bought them without trying them on. They were $50. Fifty-­dollar sweatpants.

They had a drop crotch, drawstring waist, and asymmetrical pockets halfway down the thigh. They tapered at the ankle, and I decided the best way to wear them was scrunched up around my calves.

I wore the pants to work and to parties, but never just to lounge around the house. As a member of the very small club that took the sweatpants trend seriously, I felt
soooo
cool.
I work in fashion, and I have Alexander
Wang sweatpants
, I would think when I had them on.
I am cool
.

Note that never in the history of humanity have sweatpants been the thing that defined any cool person's coolness. But this is what happens when you buy things at sample sales when you're high.

• • •

I can never go to the Alexander Wang sale without buying something strange. I went once after I bought the sweatpants and left with a sleeveless mock-turtleneck cropped sweater and a jean mom skirt with crooked silver paint running up and down the
sides. If it weren't for that paint—which later started peeling, making it look unfortunately blistered—it would just be your average knee-length denim skirt for the kind of woman who wears Tevas and her husband's old sweaters. But when I decided to buy those things, all I could think about was owning yet another piece of Alexander Wang, and Carine Roitfeld, the former French
Vogue
editor, who once was shot by street-style bloggers wearing a denim mom pencil skirt.

I will get this skirt and look so street style at the next Fashion Week
, I thought.

A professional stylist later suggested I divest my wardrobe of said skirt.

• • •

Since working in fashion, I have acquired and worn a slew of things that are objectively ridiculous. Pink acid-wash shorts. Slacks with a crotch that hangs past my knees. A sweatshirt bearing a sequined tiger face. A fedora. I blame this on several things. One is impulse. The other is shopping with other fashion-oriented people. They love clothes that they haven't seen before, or clothes that haven't been popular during your lifetime, which is for some reason often equally exciting in a way your mother's closet never was.

When you leave the house in a trendy item, you won't know how people will react to you or how you'll feel wearing it. This is exciting the way vacations to new places are exciting. You don't know what awaits you around each turn! Will there be a woman who looks at you in envy? A tourist who looks up from his map to gawk like you're something he's never seen before? Whatever it is, it's all attention.

Things you “shouldn't” buy are known as trendy. Trend items are a “waste of money” because they'll go out of style in a season. However, trend items are hands-down the most fun things to wear because, while everyone has a T-shirt, not everyone has a leather turtleneck crop top. And what fun is wearing a T-shirt when you could be wearing a leather crop top? No fun, that's what. You know what else is no fun? Looking like everyone else. No one understands this better than stage divas—that's why they always wear different outfits from their backup dancers. So it is with trends: you can either blend into the background wearing what everyone is wearing, or you can take a risk, be your own woman, and be stared at. It's like I always say: better to elicit a negative reaction than to elicit
no
reaction. Everyone wears jeans to restaurants, but not everyone wears
sweatpants
to restaurants. Being different like this is to live at the pinnacle of trendiness. And to exist at the pinnacle of trendiness, while a surefire way to get photographed a lot at Fashion Week, will perplex your friends and family who don't work in fashion.

As I've stated, style doesn't come naturally to me. I had to learn it the way I did math. Enablers—like James—helped me spend money I “shouldn't” have spent on things I “shouldn't” have bought. Enablers can be thought of as instructors in advanced placement courses—there to teach you the calculus proofs of getting dressed—and they really helped me break out of my safe place of jeans and T-shirts.

Once when I was “on a break” from a boyfriend, my friend Chris—another enabler—took me shopping. When I am upset, I buy things to cheer myself up. Probably 50 percent of the things I don't need were acquired as a means of making myself feel better about my life. Impulse shopping somehow delivers the same emo
tional benefit as going out and grabbing a drink after a rough day—and research shows it has the same temporary effect of mood boosting—except it tends to cost more. (Exceptions run rife, of course: New York never met a $17 cocktail it didn't like.) At this time, I was so upset about the guy, I was ready to spend any amount of money to make my feelings hurt less.