The Fashionista Files

by Karen Robinovitz

  “How would you like to pay for that?” the woman asked.

  I thought about it for a minute and calmly said, “Actually, I wouldn’t.” I apologized for the trouble I might have caused and walked away empty-handed. It was the first sign I was on my way to recovery. In the past I would have said, “Who cares, I’ll deal with it later,” and bought it anyway. I wouldn’t have thought twice about putting myself in a bind for the rest of the month or being relegated to eating the canned peas and corn that have been sitting in my cupboard for seven (yes, seven) years.

  Mel was shocked. And so proud of me.

  I felt such a sense of accomplishment, too, even if it took me a day or two to get over not having the new wares. Not shopping can often be as traumatic as acting out. But nothing good comes easy. And things usually get worse before they improve (kind of like your skin after a deep facial). I am handling my healing the twelve-step way: one day at a time.

  I get hard on myself for what seems like failure (a.k.a. when I fall off the wagon and give in to temptation, which was the case at a Spring 2004 trunk show for Luisa Beccaria at Kirna Zabete) from time to time. However, I am confident that it will work out, as all things do. I have successfully killed many demons in my head in my life. This is merely another one on my path.

  Just don’t ask me about my taxes.

  CLOSET BANKER

  Forget dinner with your friends—or even buying a bottle of Diet Coke! You can’t even take out $20 from the ATM machine. Dealing with your issue is not easy. But here’s one solution: Make money off your clothes—and find smart ways to save every dime you can along the way.

  Sell stuff on eBay. All you need is a digital camera and a little bit of motivation.

  Hock all your old gold jewelry—stuff you would never wear, especially if an ex-boyfriend gave it to you. Trade in for Costume National shoes.

  Have a garage sale. Your trash is another girl’s treasure.

  Bring old designer duds (or ones you’re not hopelessly in love with) to consignment shops. You don’t get the money—which is typically way less than what you paid for it, but it all adds up, right?— immediately, but you will as soon as your stuff sells. In New York City, INA is the place where the supermodels relinquish garbage bags of fresh Marc Jacobs, Narciso Rodriguez, and designer samples.

  Return gift certificates for cash.

  Donate unwearables to the Salvation Army or Goodwill; it will be a tax-deductible expense.

  Learn to be skillful when you’re dealing with your taxes. If actresses can expense makeup, fashionistas should be able to expense clothes! Pray you don’t get audited.

  Befriend the woman who owns your favorite store. After a year, discuss the possibility of layaway . . . and even discounts. Keep it a secret.

  Raid your mom’s closet. There must be something you can refurbish.

  Check out novelty fetish shops for shoes. The designers of Preen, a label in London that’s highbrow and artsy, get their fierce ankle boots from a cheap little sex store.

  Set a realistic budget, not one that you will cheat on, and one that will allow you to still buy what you want—within reason.

  Skip breakfast. It may be the most important meal of the day, but after one month of not having breakfast you might be able to save enough for a really great pair of chandelier earrings!

  Cut and color your own hair—messy, shaggy looks can be chic. And very Meg Ryan.

  CHAPTER 10

  Fashion Week!

  Seven Days of Heaven

  Twice a year, in the cities of New York, Paris, Milan, and London, the fashion flock gather and parade and display their wares. It’s known as Fashion Week, and it’s when designers show their new collections and fashionistas line up, push, shove, and make their way into crowded venues in order to see the spectacle. “The shows,” as they’re usually called, are the fashionista equivalent of a rock concert—complete with loud music, dazzling lights, drama, and the chance to cheer on the model du jour. Fashion shows involve months of prep work—from scouting a space with the right image, hiring and fitting the perfect models, designing invitations and just the right guest list, finding the best DJ, retaining a PR firm, raising funds and finding sponsors in some cases, and—forget about it—handling the seating assignments, which might just involve more creative energy than it took the designer to come up with a line to push, market, and sell. As hot as the action is on the runway, however, it doesn’t quite compare to the action in the seats.

  The most interesting thing about Fashion Week is not the sneak peek of what we will be wearing in six months, when the model’s fifteen-inch car-wash skirt hits the department stores at a more palatable twenty-five inches, but to see what we should be wearing right now. It’s a time when the fashionistas pull out all the stops, flash their style in the most exaggerated way, and show off all of their new purchases. It could be eighty degrees out in September, but that won’t stop someone from making an entrance in the latest knee-high boots and heavy wool coat from Marc Jacobs. It is a sea of spectators sizing one another up, giving one another the once-over, the double take, and a good, hard, long look up and down.

  Are the Vogue editors all in humongous fur hats? Are the Bazaar girls running around in striped scarves? Is that the W accessories director in pink lizard-skin slingbacks? What about the kooky art kids from Surface, Paper, and Black Book? Why are they suddenly all wearing glitter-encrusted stretch jeans? The latest trends are all on display—whether they are ponchos or vintage tweed suits or full-length flight suits. Fashion Week is for the advanced fashionistas, the professionals—but there’s no reason why an amateur can’t join in the fun.

  In this chapter we’ll give you a no-holds-barred inside look at the phenomenon that is Fashion Week, as well as teach you how to crash fashion shows and dress like you belong, which parties to attend, where to get the best goody bags, whether to take a town car or taxi, and where to find the best champagne in the house. Drink up!

  TAKING OFF FOR THE RUNWAYS!

  Sneaking out to Set the Style Agenda MELISSA

  During the five years that I regularly covered Fashion Week for several New York newspapers and magazines, I was also working full-time as a computer programmer. Stealth was definitely in order if I wanted to attend the shows. Luckily I was a computer consultant during the heyday of the boom, when totally unnecessary (and very lazy) people like me could command six-figure corporate salaries without batting an eyelash.

  Two weeks before Fashion Week I put aside my travel budget. While the shows in New York are mostly set up in the tents in Bryant Park, several rogue designers like to show off-site, like Marc Jacobs, who always shows at the Lexington Armory, or design darlings from overseas like Alexander McQueen, Nicolas Ghesquière, and Helmut Lang, who prefer to rent airline hangars or former gas stations for their presentations, which are usually better than the most decadent Broadway production.

  There are a minimum of eight to ten shows every day during Fashion Week, and some shows are scheduled for the same hour. I checked with my editor about my expense account, looked at my options, and took action as necessary. First off, I had to go to work. I would arrive at the bank wearing my nondescript corporate drag, carrying a garment bag with my Fashion Week outfit. In the bathroom, on would go the zebra-print Dolce & Gabbana jeans, the bejeweled Christian Dior pumps, the ostrich-feather hat.

  “Cool shoes” was all my coworkers said whenever they saw me dressed this way. By now they were used to seeing me do the fashion superwoman transformation. I would hail a cab to the tents in Bryant Park or wherever, attend several shows, and get back to the office in time to clock out a full eight-hour day, with no one the wiser. While most of the real fashion editors were holed up at fancy hotels or else running back to the Condé Nast tower to close the next issue, I would return to the drab confines of my gray, carpet-walled cubicle. But perhaps because I saw what life without fashion would be like (bleak, empty, ultimately depressing despite the fat paychecks), I treasur
ed those two weeks a year even more.

  Getting There and Getting Noticed

  IT’S NOT THE JOURNEY; IT’S THE DESTINATION. FASHION WEEK TRAVEL AT ITS FINEST

  If you can wrangle the use of a car and driver through work or friends, or have been approved for town car use in a city, give other fashionistas a ride if they lack one. They will remember your generosity—and one night you might find you don’t have a car and they do, and they will happily share their limo with you.

  New York, Paris, Milan, and London all have ver y dependable rail systems. If you’re on a budget, take the underground, the metro or the subway, and save yourself the ten dollars it would cost to take a cab. Just don’t tell anyone. Public transportation is often frowned upon.

  Investing in a car and driver if you are going to attend several shows in different areas in one day is worth it. While the organizers provide a bus, most high-profile fashionistas never take it. Offer to share the cost and your ride with a friend to save money.

  Get in touch with the PR company whose client is sponsoring Fashion Week and try to get hooked up through them. For years Mercedes was the title sponsor of New York’s Fashion Week, and they often provided cars and drivers for the biggest stars in the biz.

  Travel with your bodyguards, à la Anna Wintour. It elevates your image.

  At a high-profile show, escape paparazzi by getting PR flacks to escort you to secret back entranceways. Calvin Klein shows at Milk Studios, glossy lofts on West Fifteenth Street, and VIPs avoid annoying camera action by entering through Jeffrey, the West Fourteenth Street store that is attached to Milk.

  CRASHING THE HIGH

  Following the Flock MELISSA

  During the fall of 2000 the fashion world anointed its new boy genius, the man who would be its savior, the next John Galliano. The next Gaultier. The next McQueen. His name was Miguel Adrover, and he was the Great Majorcan Hope, a shy thirty-two-year-old who toiled in the East Village and caused an immediate buzz from his lone guerrilla fashion show the last season. The show birthed several key iconic pieces: a mattress coat made out of the late Quentin Crisp’s bedding, a deconstructed Burberry trench coat remade as a dress, a “cap-sleeve” sweater made with real Yankee baseball caps, and a coat made from vintage Louis Vuitton luggage. Anna Wintour reportedly trampled overturned cars to see the show.

  It was understandable, then, that everyone was excited to see what the man would do next. Miguel was now being backed by the Pegasus Group, who sank five million dollars into his enterprise. The funding gave Miguel’s atelier the ability to hire a real fashion publicist, Marion Greenberg Inc., a major force to be reckoned with.

  Tickets to the show were in such high demand that the news was that if you hadn’t merited a hand-delivered invitation (which consisted of a dirty dollar bill with the location and seat assignment stamped on it), you had to make the pilgrimage, plead your case with Marion, and perhaps—only perhaps—you would be deemed worthy to attend. As writers for an indie fashion site, my editor in chief and I made the trek to the showroom to work our magic. It worked. Sort of. My editor got a “standing” denomination. But I left empty-handed.

  “And I’ve known Miguel since he was sewing patches on rag dolls!” my editor fumed. I was even more upset! But there was no way I was going to miss this show. At first we decided we would create our own dollar bill and approximate the orange stamp. But after a few tries with a Sharpie, we ended up with dollar mush. We decided to plot strategy, as intricately and with as much seriousness as generals going to war. We knew what we were up against. Security at fashion shows is so tight you’d think they were guarding the Pope. Liz Tilberis, the late and great editor in chief of Bazaar, was famous for socking the security guards in the nose after they wouldn’t let her two assistant fashion editors into a show in Paris.

  “We’ll just fight our way in,” my editor declared. “I’ll hold up the bill, and you just run in with me.” I pushed up my Helmut Lang sleeves and agreed. When we arrived at the temple, it looked like all of fashionable New York was in front of the building. It was frightening. We feared death by stomping, which would have been fatal with all those nail-heeled Gucci shoes! Nonetheless, we shouldered on. Around us everyone was waving dollar bills at the clipboard girls. It was such madness that people simply clawed their way inside and the PR chicks gave up trying to control the situation. We were all suffering from fashion mania. It was straight out of WWE!

  It was rumored that Anna Wintour had given up trying to get in after two hours. (Anna Wintour rumors are rampant during Fashion Week. What’s Anna wearing? What did Anna think of the show? How skinny is she these days?) Lo and behold, I made my way inside. I felt triumphant, sweaty, and a little deranged. My carefully blown-out hair was askew, my sweater was torn, and I think I still had both my shoes, but I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. We found seats! We had to battle two nasty editors from French Vogue for them, but we wouldn’t give them up. Ne parlez Français. We shrugged helplessly.

  As for the show . . . What could live up to that kind of expectation? Miguel offered long, drab skirts, djellabas, and a flock of sheep shepherded by models on the runway. One sheep wouldn’t go where it was told, and stood on the end, bleating in annoyance. Some of the “models” left turds on the runway. If there was any “fashion genius” going on, it was completely beyond me. But at least I was there to witness the lack of it!

  Secret of My Success KAREN

  From 1994 to 1997 I worked as a peon at Fairchild Publications, the powerhouse media company that publishes Women’s Wear Daily (a.k.a. the fashion bible) and W magazine. While my days were spent doing the remedial, low-end tasks for which important people hadn’t the time—handing out mail, carrying flowers from the messenger center to some big editor’s desk, occasionally returning a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds to Tiffany, and fetching coffee for the powers that be—I thought myself lucky to be in an environment where such vital fashion news was being reported. Every minute I was exposed to glorious racks of clothing rolling through the office, detailed conversations and faxes about the production of photo shoots (the best way to learn is by eavesdropping), and what life is like on a crazy deadline schedule. It seemed like such a dream. I couldn’t wait to move up the ranks and be more than just a gofer. This was the place where Calvin Klein got his start.

  The fashionistas lurking inside the fluorescent-lit loftlike space had a commanding presence. They almost always wore black. Every day I overheard watercooler convo about who was wearing what (“Did you see that Miu Miu fur? What about Bridget’s skirt? It’s Galliano!”), but as a newbie on the circuit I was too intimidated to speak up. Instead I watched carefully and learned a lot about dressing and style. It was the first time I was exposed to superhigh pointy-toed stilettos—with jeans! And I relished the look, promptly adopting it with my own spin. The aura of the place was always fast-paced, slightly insane, and stylish. And during Fashion Week it was the same, only much more so.

  No one was in the office during showtime. It was go, go, go. Big editors got car services while the rest were left to their own devices. The crew dressed to the nines. No expense was spared for Fashion Week style. Most people “called in” clothes from big design houses in order to borrow something chic. And everyone would try to give a designer a “nod” by showing up at the collection in something from the designer in question. Wear Oscar to Oscar, Calvin to Calvin, Ralph to Ralph. Change in the cab if you must. I wanted to be a part of the craziness of it all, but there was no way. I was too low on the ladder to merit an invite. Once someone let me have a “standing only” invitation that no one had claimed, but I had too many things to file in order to go.

  By my second year at WWD, however, I started to know more people. Extra perks were thrown my way from time to time (they must have figured, “Give the dog a bone. . . .” After all, there was only so much begging they could handle). But the perks never came in the form of a fashion show invite. So I took it upon myself to find a
way in. One season I dolled myself up like nobody’s business, having saved for months to afford wares of a certain caliber from the gleaming Calvin Klein store on Madison Avenue.

  I was determined to get into his show, no matter what. I managed to attach myself to a group of what appeared to be important editors (they were all speaking with British accents and wearing wild fedoras and leather Dior suits, which must have meant they were someone). I got up the nerve to put on my most pretentious accent and say to one of the women, “Darling, these Manolos are killing my feet. Do you mind if I hold on to you while we make it through this crowd of vulgarians?” She understood—and being the fairy-godmother fashionista from across the pond that she was, she said, “Darling, I do understand. Of course, love.” She gave me her arm. With that I tricked the doorkeeper, who assumed I was part of the posse.

  My next step was seat scouring. I waited until most of the crowd poured in before I pounced. I figured I’d let the real invitees sit and then grab a seat belonging to an ungrateful no-show. Thirtyfive minutes later (these things never start on time), I was perched in the second row (not as good as first, but much better than being in my office, filing). I watched the show in awe. I had never seen such beauty, such flawless makeup, such tall, gorgeous women, such covetable clothes.

  And as I walked out, I wasn’t thinking about the fact that I’d have to explain my extended lunch break. My low-level status didn’t even come to mind. I just felt high, like I had just tasted the good life and I never wanted the flavor to go away. It did, sadly. The second I got back to the office! An editor had spotted me in the second row and reamed me for it, saying that I had no right to be there because I was just an assistant. She wanted to know how I got in and what the hell I was doing there. She threatened to get my ass fired in a snap. I found out later that she was just angry because she was in the fourth row. The horror!