Tales from the Back Row

by Amy Odell

  But I’m not a stylist—I’m a writer and editor. It’s not necessarily my job to know how to put really interesting outfits together. It’s my job to understand trends, interview designers and models and celebrities, and to piece it all together for various blog items for my readers. I had to look professional, yes, and ideally sort of stylish, but I didn’t necessarily need to know that the black-and-white leopard Cavalli top goes perfectly with those Lucite-heeled neon-trimmed Marni shoes and that pair of high-waisted jean shorts with the Chanel brooch on the upper right ass cheek.

  I loved getting to riff and joke all day about celebrity clothing lines and J. Lo’s sequined body stockings. I loved taking interviews and turning them into stories. I love writing about almost anything, really. But I am not a personal-style blogger, and I do not possess the same talents as Rumi “Fashiontoast” Neely, who is one of the original stars. She shot a series a few years back I’ll always remember. She was wearing white and sashaying down a dark road holding a dream catcher. This is her work. Put on a ridiculously cool outfit, pose somewhere telegenic with a dream catcher or meal of fast food or one of her fluffy cats, repeat. She’s managed to make a handsome career out of living her life as though it was one giant fashion editorial aka making her followers (me) wildly jealous of her life and taste. She ended up starring in a campaign for Forever 21. She has an agent. She’s a jet-setter.

  What I find people are usually referring to when they say “fashion bloggers,” are people like Fashiontoast, or the Man Repeller (who models clothing that women love but that—wait for it—­repels men), and Sea of Shoes (who, well, actually does the same thing). They are personal-style bloggers who operate independent sites, formatted like blogs. Some brands are really into having these bloggers come to Fashion Week and will organize them all in the front row the way I imagine Martha Stewart’s flavored salt collection to be arranged attractively in the foreground of her spice cupboard. Brands seem to think that putting a bunch of bloggers in the front row will make a statement about how digitally savvy they are. But this says very little: seating a bunch of personal-­style bloggers together in one place just means that that brand was able to print out the names of the most successful independently employed professional clothes wearers and tape them to some adjoining chair backs.

  These bloggers are valuable in terms of publicizing certain brands. They have loyal followings that buy the items they link to or wear. And they’re often “safe” because they generally cover everything positively. I was not a visible “face” in the industry and am not guaranteed to be positive about everything, so I get a great view of these bloggers from my seat twelve rows behind them, in the back row. I look upon these beautiful, ornately dressed people in envy, marveling at how I’d never think to wear two sheer blouses at once.

  What’s interesting about the bloggers’ rush to the front row is how quickly they’re displacing print media. Some of these bloggers have more significant—and probably more valuable—web presences than some legacy media brands. And you wonder why that is when these magazines have at least a couple dozen people on staff, and these blogs are run by maybe one person plus, arguably, whoever takes their pictures. Why some magazine websites aren’t met with the same enthusiasm as ManRepeller.com is an embarrassment to these brands, which have, presumably, many, many more resources than a girl with a computer, a dream, and an affinity for fabulous shoes.

  It’s not like people like Sea of Shoes have taken Anna Wintour’s front-row seat (LOL, no), but they might end up sitting across from her, which suggests they’re of fairly similar importance as far as fashion world personalities go. Anna is surely more powerful, but she and the Seas of Shoeses of this world do have one significant thing in common: they’re recognizable. They have a look. They’re street-style photographer bait, whether they like it (Sea of Shoes) or not (Anna, seemingly). Street-style publicity is important because it helps make someone a personality, and the more of a personality you are, the more valuable you become. The bloggers seem to like street-style attention, for the most part, but they don’t have much choice because it’s essential to their brands. Meanwhile, for people like Anna, who walks past photographers as though it’s just started raining and she can’t wait to get inside, getting to wherever one’s going is always more important than getting photographed going there. Anna is part of the group who shows up for the work itself, but for the new guard of fashion internet celebs, getting attention for showing up is part of the work.

  Street style has become VERY intense at Fashion Week. It can feel like the paparazzi stalking Britney Spears in the weeks leading up to her head-shaving meltdown, except Fashion Week people don’t scream at the street-style photographers for taking their pictures. Rather, they invite it by dressing elaborately and out of season and making themselves as available as a hot dog vendor outside show venues. I once came across a serious street-style photograph, by esteemed street-style photographer Mr. Newton, of a woman who happened to be a fashion blogger, “having lunch at the Seagram Building” in Manhattan on a Monday, wearing a sheer black blouse with nothing underneath. You could see all of her boobs, so it was like she was topless, and one imagined if she was indeed just on a lunchtime stroll, there would be lots of bankers in suits gathering around, staring at her boobs. I remember wondering, Is this what street style has come to? The painfully stylish look is so done that people have to be NUDE to get photographed?

  It used to be that people who had clearly styled their outfits just so would linger around fashion events pretending to be engaged in meaningful conversations with friends they see so infrequently that 90 percent of their interactions are air-kissing. And then if they were dressed right, a street-style photographer would notice their fab outfit, and they’d be like, “Oh, me? You want to photograph me? OKAY, I GUESS I HAVE TIME! Enchanté, Josephine, but IT’S TIME FOR MY MOMENT!” And then they’d pose with one leg bent inward a little bit like they’d practiced it. Now, swarms of street-style paparazzi and being photographed for that little corner of the internet has become such a fact at Fashion Week that it’s now perfectly acceptable to show up dressed really bizarrely and flashily and just stand there until people gather around you to photograph you. You couldn’t find a more perfect relic of this narcissistic internet age.

  • • •

  People who go to Fashion Week sometimes dress just to get photographed. This does not mean people were necessarily dressing more thoughtfully or more creatively or (dare I even suggest the concept) more practically, but now they seem to dress just purely outlandishly, wearing clothing just for the sake of ornamentation and spectacle. As I started my second year at the Cut, I noticed that’s how it worked: the stranger and flashier you looked—the more garish of a trend cocktail you could turn your body into—the more likely you were to get shot by these photographers. Runway clothes often work the same way: you see so many “normal” outfits as a person who works in the fashion business, that only the weird stuff becomes interesting and the so-weird-it’s-borderline-not-clothing stuff becomes the only apparel that can possibly unhinge the extreme boredom brought on by most fashion shows that suckles the life straight from the teat of a fashion person’s soul. Standing out—and I mean really standing out—becomes the new normal. The good thing about the street-style nonsense is that you get even more spectacular people watching than you’d get without it. Women end up going to fashion shows wearing stiletto sandals and chiffon skirts with no tights in February, or with glittery pineapples affixed to their heads, or with hair dyed to look gray instead of the other way around, or with big furry neon tails attached to their purses or slung around their necks because they’re Louis Vuitton and Prada and therefore elevated from completely absurd items of excess to so on-trend. If a well-styled Fashion Week person got off the plane in 99 percent of the places on the rest of the earth, they’d be treated like aliens, of this I’m certain. Because that’s how you fit in in this industry: wear something that would
look insane just about everywhere that is not Fashion Week.

  I once undertook an experiment to see if I could get photographed. At this point, I had three years at the Cut on my résumé: I understood the secret salt of the personal-style blogger. So I decided to go to the shows one day wearing a street-style costume. Ideally, I’d end up with a story about how street-style stardom boils down to a few things that don’t necessarily bespeak one’s totes fab style, but rather a sanitized version of looking ridiculous. My friend at work, Diana, a market editor, tried to call in a bunch of spectacular designer things for me to wear. This being Fashion Week, no one was interested in lending me an outfit because I’m not Madonna (breaking news) and they had actual important shows to put on—and here the back-row girl wants to borrow something? Though just about everyone we asked had negative interest in getting back to us to even reject us, we did manage to get Miu Miu to loan us a pair of open-toed glitter booties. But as the days dragged on and the window of time in which I had to pull off this experiment closed, I became increasingly anxious.

  Day three of Fashion Week arrived. This is one of the most important days of New York Fashion Week, because designers Prabal Gurung, Alexander Wang, and Joseph Altuzarra all usually show. Often this is a busy day of actual work for me (reporting and writing about what happens that day, by which I mean willing things to happen because usually nothing worth writing about happens when all that’s at stake is a bunch of people sitting in a room watching skinny tall girls walk back and forth wearing stuff), which leaves little time for self-indulgent outfit planning.

  On day three, Prabal Gurung often has the first big show of the day. He is a really fabulous human being who remembers people and is always extra-kind when he speaks to them, but not in a fake, meeting-your-friend’s-other-bridesmaids sort of way that makes you want to fork yourself. Before the show that year, I was on the list for a backstage interview, as was then New York Times critic Cathy Horyn, so I had to wait.

  Like moviemaking, waiting is a big part of Fashion Week. If you’re not waiting backstage for a designer or headsetted person to find you important enough to speak to, you’re waiting to get inside a show venue, or waiting in your seat for a show to start. Most shows start, on average, half an hour late. Which doesn’t make sense because, you may wonder, how long could it take to comb a girl’s hair, fill in her eyebrows, and slip her into a dress? Forever, actually. It takes until the end of time to do these things. Partly because the models just came from a show where they had their hair painted with liquid clay and their entire eye sockets coated with red glitter. So that has to be undone before their hair, makeup, and nails can be done all over again for the show you’re waiting to see. Then the designer has to finish visiting with important fashion critics like Cathy Horyn, before he finishes dressing his models and regarding them and so forth. Also, he has to wait for his seats to fill up, because often attendees are late because they had to preen for some cameras and have no expectation of these things starting on time anyway. (Some designers can afford to start on time, because everything revolves around them, and the guests are the ones who will really feel stupid if they are late and miss the show, but this is only, like, two people.)

  Luckily, while I waited, I bumped into Bryanboy, one of the original fashion bloggers who dresses quite fabulously and gets photographed at fashion nonsense all the time. I filled him in on my scheme and asked him what he thought I should wear to actually pull this off. Bryanboy had borrowed a few beautiful designer things, including the colorful top he was wearing, to wear to the shows. I remember him telling me he thought street-style dressing had ­become so extreme that only the absolute most cutting-edge of all clothing would make an impact on photographers in a given season, unless they already knew you as a street-style celebrity. What is the most cutting-­edge apparel in all the land? Well, possibly couture—the world’s most expensive, entirely handmade clothes, that only qualify as couture when they are actually certified by a French council. But there exists a league of clothes arguably even more cutting-­edge than couture, and that is next season’s clothes. Meaning, the clothes we were seeing on the runways right now that wouldn’t hit stores for average women to buy for another several months. I was beginning to despair. Dresses don’t just go straight from a runway to my body because, again, I’m not Madonna. How would I turn myself into a street-style parody without doing something ­embarrassing like showing up wearing a coconut bra and leggings? It was the only way I might ever look street-style strange enough.

  Just as Gurung finished his chat with Cathy, celebrity stylist and designer Rachel Zoe came bounding into the venue. Well, Rachel Zoe didn’t have her name put on a list to go backstage, but I remember that she did seem to have free rein to run around wherever she wanted that season, devoid of the seven layers of badges, wristbands, and Hogwarts-level clearance the plebeians like me need to get backstage to do their work.

  She wore a black suit with flared pants and a multistrand gold bracelet and her signature oversized dark sunglasses, with a QVC tag hanging around her neck (she was showing her QVC line that season and had to wear credentials for that, but not this). And, whereas badges were outfit death for most not-famous people, she was probably getting her face photographed off anyway. But that’s what you get when you’re a burgeoning icon with an iconic look and a Bravo show.

  Gurung slipped away from Cathy to greet Zoe, who was in a big rush to get back to QVC. Zoe deserved his enthusiasm because she helped make him a big deal by dressing her clients (Demi Moore, Kate Hudson) in Gurung’s pieces when he was relatively unknown. Their love, as it manifested that day, is that of two people in a long-distance relationship who just want to do it as soon as they see each other. Zoe greeted Gurung with a slew of exclamations involving giggling and OH MY GODs and lots of squealing. He did the same, they uttered each other’s names orgasmically. Mid-embrace, Gurung lifted Zoe’s lithe body off the ground, she wrapped her legs around his waist, and there was more giggling and shrieking and displaying. I enjoyed watching all this, though it had the collective effect of making me feel even less important than I already do, as I was being held by a few headsetted people in an area away from where the racks of clothes hung in clear plastic. Cathy and Rachel Zoe were allowed within the racks, but I was not, because I had been eating granola bars all morning like a child, and my hands were clearly unacceptably sticky and dangerous to the dresses! (Kidding, I would never let fashion people see me eating. What kind of person do you think I am?)

  “Show me EVERYTHING!!!!” Rachel said in a fit of genuine excitement, as their hands fluttered, and Gurung began taking her from dress to dress on the racks. Zoe and Gurung progressed down the racks, with him explaining, her gasping and speaking with periods between all her words (“Oh. My. God. This. Is. So. Stunning. I. Can’t. Even. Handle. The. Purple”). Everyone in the room acted like they weren’t captivated by the exchange, but they totally were, and everyone’s life at that moment revolved around it. Except maybe Cathy, who exchanged pleasantries with Rachel, though she didn’t embrace her while lifting her body off the ground and so Rachel therefore didn’t get the opportunity to wrap her legs around Cathy’s waist. There is not a lot of displaying that goes with this interaction, because when two women talk it’s frowned upon to act as though they’re in a day care center, but when a woman and a gay man talk, years of adult development and maturation can acceptably be tossed out the window.

  In a few minutes, Rachel left, as though her presence were all just a montage in someone else’s reality show. At this point, I was supposed to get to talk to Prabal, but it didn’t happen because the models had to put in their runway dresses! Time waits for no man! (Except at Fashion Week, when it actually waits for all of them.)

  A mass of slow-moving people entered the venue a few minutes before the show started: evidence of a major celeb walking among us. All I could see of this Famous One gracing us with her presence that day was a giant curly mass
of yellow-and-pink cotton candy wig topped with a pillow-sized pink iridescent bow. The dramatically accessorized hair bobbed within a circle of giant security guards and various other people looking extremely purposeful. I figured it was Nicki Minaj, though someone in the crowd loudly asked, “IS THAT LADY GAGA?” Oh, the fool, mistaking the top of Nicki Minaj’s head for Lady Gaga’s! In a room full of fashion people! That was so embarrassing for him! I tweeted the errant remark immediately and it got more reactions than 90 percent of my other tweets combined that Fashion Week. For that, I would like to thank, deeply, the gay community.

  After Nicki Minaj was seated and everyone who had left their seats to ogle her—thereby setting back the progress we’d made toward starting the show by about 60 percent—had been forced by security to sit down again, the show finally started more than half an hour late. As annoying as this is, it doesn’t really matter since fashion shows have one-hour time slots, and the shows themselves take only a few minutes. Finally, I got to see what exactly had been going on with all the colors and patterns hanging in the plastic wrap backstage.

  That season, Gurung showed sheer pants dripping with purple metallic Latex, flirty dresses with mesh paneling where you’d expect to see a woman’s underpants, and pretty floral-inspired prints. Some of these prints looked the way turquoise and floral wallpaper would look if you were high and stared at it too long. These things would definitely get me photographed. Too bad I was more likely to turn into a cat than be allowed to borrow them.