Kamis, 28 Agustus 2014

Fashion Week Confidential: The Show Crasher


In the week leading up to New York Fashion Week, we'll be bringing you dishy tell-alls from the behind-the-scenes folks who make fashion week run. Here, a show crasher shares her story.



For reasons I'll never understand, I somehow convinced myself that standing outside in Midtown during a snowstorm wearing a coat I bought in the fourth grade was going to help me further my career. I was a few feet away from the entrance to the rag & bone show, shivering next to a 'No Parking' sign, wearing a pair of rain boots I got at Target on sale. I looked on as Drew Barrymore hurried inside.


You see, my mother, in a lapse of judgement, had allowed me to skip three days of high school and spend money I had made from my job at Cold Stone Creamery to fly up to New York to try to sneak into New York Fashion Week.


I planted myself outside the show for a full half hour until everyone had gone in before I decided to live up to my millennial stereotype and YOLO my way in. I could see the Gawker headline:


'Crazed Cold Stone Ice-Cream Server Tries to Crash NYFW Because, YOLO'


My heart was beating so fast and loud that it was all I could hear as I walked the long sidewalk to the entrance of the venue behind the New York Post Office. The large security guard at the door looked at me. I nervously pretended to look for something in my bag—a skill I had acquired when my French teacher was checking for homework.


Then, I saw it: A soggy, foot-print-covered rag & bone invitation on the ground. (I never got this lucky in French class.) The security guard looked at me. I looked at him. I looked at the invitation. He looked at me. I picked up the invitation. He looked at me. I looked at him. He looked at the invitation. He stepped aside.


I walked inside as fast as I possibly could and spotted the PR check-in desk. I looked at it. No one looked at me. I stepped inside.


I fought the urge to jump up and down wildly because, suddenly, I was standing next to Miroslava Duma. I WAS IN!


After I took a blurry Instagram of Drew Barrymore (27 likes), I found my way to the standing section. I watched, mesmerized, as model after model stomped onto the runway. I refused to take a single picture of the show because it was one of those moments that I wanted to be entirely present for. The fabric shining from the bright lights focused on the runway, the deafening music overhead, the excitement radiating from the crowd of people I religiously stalked on social media—it made all the cold I endured worth it.


Now, almost two years later, I work in fashion full-time, side-by-side with the people I had once admired from across the runway, and I swear: The minute I get a fancy Fashion Week invitation with my name on it, I'm 'dropping' it a few feet away from the show. Call it paying it fashion forward.


Related: Fashion Week Confidential: The Nightclub Bouncer

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