New York Fashion Week starts today...

New York Fashion Week for Fall 2009 kicked off this morning. And that’s pretty much all you’re going to hear from me on the subject. After working twenty hour days last season, belting around Manhattan covering nearly every big show, hot young designer appointment and the major advertisers’ parties & presentations, spending a day in hospital with an eye infection caused by overwork and getting drenched to the skin five times when my car got delayed, with the misery compounded by a disengaged editor and an inexperienced, inefficient and out of his depth assistant, I am actively engaging with not engaging with the whole kerfuffle this time round.

My inbox has been inundated with invitations but, as a freelancer, attending the shows is a waste of time. I’m old enough not to be given the traditional freelancer’s nosebleed seat behind a pillar, but I still wouldn’t get a great view (the first four or five rows are reserved exclusively for magazines and buyers). Frankly I’d see it all better on style.com.

And there’s little point in networking when there’s a hiring freeze across the board, and the whole affair seems like a wake for the fashion industry as we know it. Attending Fashion Week is stressful, time-consuming & expensive and if I’m not being paid to be there to report on it all or be nice to advertisers, I’d rather see the clothes on appointment later in the season. Because, after all, it is the clothes that are the point of it all.