Fashion Week has long been a culmination of starving souls yearning, aching and damn near dying to be noticed. It happens twice a year, for a week at a time (and thankfully not more).
New York's most fashionable residents, editors, designers and wannabe industry folk, clammer for the limited number of highly coveted golden tickets (read: invitations) that grant them access to a society that meets inside tents for 7 days, with assigned seating and abnormally loud costumes.
I used to be one of the charmed guests inside said tents, feverishly jotting down scribbles about the garments cascading down the runway. There was an undeniable thrill that would take over me every time a new Fashion Week invitation landed on my desk. As if the more you get, the cooler you are. In the weeks preceding Fashion Week, I'd begin to collect the invitations and place them in 3 piles; the definite yes's, the maybe's and the I'd rather sit at my desk bored out of my mind than trek to this unknown line's presentation. The latter was a surprisingly large heap.
The RSVP process is a self-sabotaging one, but people fall for it year after year. You call a number and leave a message spelling out your name, affiliation and phone number and then wait for a public relations intern to call you back with your seat assignment. Getting low-balled with a seat that isn't in the first or second row is almost a good enough reason to bail on attending, because, can you imagine facing all your peers and having them witness your lousy seat while they take in the sights from the sidelines? Not having a seat right up front means you're basically a nobody, and who wants to admit that?
Now that I live in LA and I'm not one of the girls getting all glammed up to join in the mayhem that is Fashion Week, I can reflect on all of it's annoyances and idiocies.
Not once during a show or presentation did I ever witness anything anyone in the real world would wear -- except for maybe on Halloween. And then there are the people who dress up especially for Fashion Week, with clothing bought and borrowed for this one excuse to wear "fashionable" i.e. WEIRD clothes. I can proudly say that I was never one of those people. I never wore anything I wouldn't normally wear, because I felt uncomfortable enough in my regular garb among the freaks of Fashion Week.
Now that Instagram exists, Fashion Week feels like it's happening before my eyes. My feed is clogged with photos of shoes shot by the wearer from above, as if I'm supposed to care what they're hoofing around in all day. And, nobody with an Instagram account who is attending fashion week neglects to use the video feature to capture models strutting down a runway while conveniently showing they're capturing the image from the front row, and not an inch behind it.
If you look at it purely from an entertainment standpoint, sure, it would be fun to go to a show (especially if it's not for work), otherwise, I'm content blitzing through my feed from 3,000 miles away.