CASEY's STYLE FILE No. 1

Behind New York Fashion Week & The Rules for Stylishly making it into the Tents

There is never a better time to observe the style efforts of others than during fashion week. The city and every fashionista in it morph into 16 year old girls shopping on 5th avenue for the first time…excited, nervous, and filled with such high expectations that are bound to be slightly let down in some way or another by the reality of it all.

For people working in the industry, fashion week is hell week; a week of many long nights, followed by mornings of grainy coffee in stained mugs. The design teams frantically make last minute alterations and sometimes even add pieces to their collections the day before the show as they continue to edit and re-edit everything. PR people work on their press/socialite/celebrity invitees, making sure that their seating assignments won’t offend too many people and that their front rows will look at least as good as the presented collections. Sales teams call, email, call, mail, call, stalk, and call buyers and store owners in hopes of setting up buying appointments for the next few weeks while purses are still full and money is waiting to be burned.

The modeling agents seem to be on two calls at every given moment, talking to both the client, negotiating terms, payment and scheduling, and to the models, tracking them down and changing their schedules from one minute to the next. The models (who may very well be only fourteen and speak little or no English) run frantically from one casting to the next while squeezing in fittings and trying to navigate around New York City.

But while the week is hell for the design houses and event firms, it is also a huge headache for those attending the shows. Fashion editors, writers, stylists, and all of their assistants spend the week prioritizing, scheduling, checking and rechecking seating assignments for every show. Reviewing writers run from one show to another, scribbling notes about key items, fabric, overall collection feel and quality before heading back to the office late in the evening to writing everything up for possibly 10 shows.

Then why, if it is such a headache, does fashion week happen twice a year, in so many places, and with such incredible buzz? Perhaps simply because it is fashion and we truly are slaves to it, but I have a feeling it also has to do with the incredible high we get off of all of it. We all love every exciting, anxious, annoying, uncertain, frightening, and joyous minute of it. It is truly a week eagerly looked forward to and equally dreaded by everyone in the industry.

For those not working in the industry, fashion week is a glittering, glamorous event that brings beautiful people from all over the world to the city. It's something most can see, but can’t really touch.

There are of course the people who are front-row staples at every show, who do not work in the industry in a traditional sense. Celebrities, who are becoming increasingly important and influential in fashion, take front row near the photography pit (where else) and often times the number of them seems to measure of how good a designer is considered to the public.

Socialites are also a select group of people who enjoy a privileged status during fashion week. These are people who have made careers out of attending benefits, fashionable functions, and celebrity-sprinkled events, all the while looking stylish and perfectly polished head-to-toe. They are big players in the fashion game and once you know who they are, you’ll notice them drenched in designers on the pages of W, Vogue and the like along side the more recognizable celebrities.

While a designer shows his/her style through the clothing, show presentation, venue, music, inspiration, and complete collection looks, a socialite shows his/her style through dress and by the events they choose to attend. While they seem very privileged and comfortable sitting front-row, they have only gained that status by following certain rules. The unspoken rules that, when followed, may ultimately lead to front-row status during fashion week include, but are certainly not limited to:

1. always rsvp, and if you would like to bring a friend, ask if you can have a +1 ahead of time. you don’t ever want to hear, “you’re not on the list…”

2. be dressed by the designer of the show you’re attending

3. if you are not being dressed then wear greater or equal designer digs, but make sure you are totally, totally original on how you wear them, being sure to mix things up with those perfect, rare vintage finds. remember, you can’t be head-to-toe one designer or you’ll just look like an unoriginal asshole to everyone else

4. have your hair and makeup look perfectly natural and easy (making it look as if you are one of the amazing flawless people racing from one front row to the next)

5. always go to the shows where you will be seated. when attending shows where you are not seated, sit where a person you know is to be seated until said person arrives, if they don’t then relax and enjoy the show

6. mingle, mingle, mingle, smile, smile, smile, and while doing so get photographed, photographed, photographed (if possible with major socialites, designers, celebrities, etc)

7. refer to the Marc Jacobs show as the Marc show only if you’ve personally met the designer, if you haven’t be respectful and call the brand by its true fall name

8. introduce yourself to as many people as possible, be polite and honestly try to remember each face with the correct name (repeat their full name in your head a few times)

9. look through the images taken during the event/show and see when and where you pop up and with whom

10. always be gracious and polite to all people working the venue…you never who who they are or who they may be the next time fashion week rolls around

So next fashion week, when you attend the various shows, or look at the tents from afar and sigh, remember the rules and all of the effort that went into the glamorous, beautiful, and spectacular fiasco. I smile when thinking about the week just past and am already excited about the one to come…bring forth the fashion!

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