The internal competition at Conde Nast was one of my least favorite aspects of the job, but not the least: that honor was reserved for attending fashion shows. Almost immediately I loathed them, for reasons I both understand and (still!) don’t. At the very, very beginning, it was kind of glamorous and fun. But after a while it just felt like a very chic, super-uptight version of Groundhog Day. You file in to a crowded venue jammed with some of the scariest people on earth*, wait 30 minutes (or lots more) for the show to begin, and then know it's about to when black-clad assistants remove the protective plastic sheet from the runway. Then the lights go black, and the photographers at the foot of the runway all shout "Uncross your legs!" This is slightly alarming to hear the first time, but they’re only addressing the front row: otherwise, stray legs show up in their shots. Soon, the music starts playing, loudly, and then suddenly it is piercingly bright, and a passel of identically made-up models proceed down the runway for ten to fifteen minutes. Then it's over and you go repeat the whole thing somewhere else. After a while, it's just a grind. People who go to the shows for a living—buyers, editors—think of it as just that, a living, and most of the glamour drains away quite quickly for them too.
At one of my first shows, Lucky’s fashion director, Hope, retrieved a pen from her bag and handed it to me. "You have to look like you're taking notes," she said. "Just write on your program. All the editors do it. Draw a picture if you don't have anything to write." So I tried, but felt ridiculous. I had few thoughts on the clothes—some shows were so outright bad that even I could tell, but mostly everything just struck me as rather pretty—if often unwearable. I didn’t know yet that clothes look significantly more dramatic on the runway—thigh slits higher, necklines lower—than they do when they arrive in stores.
In my first-row seat I'd grow lost in thought, pretending to be laser-focused on the runway while I was in truth just wondering if I'd forgotten to give the dog her meds that morning, or pondering what I might order for lunch when I arrived back at the office.
And if you are in the first row at a show, you are being watched, every single moment. I felt deeply self-conscious there, acutely aware that people were wondering, How did she get there? I couldn’t help, at moments like this, but to wonder the same thing.
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