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.

NYFW parties

So having slept all afternoon like a hibernating dormouse in a nest of cashmere shawls on my bed, I spent a glorious hour dancing between the bedroom & bathroom having an almighty primping session, the likes of which I haven’t indulged in since my birthday at the beginning of December. I'm not really engaging with NYFW, as I'm still not wholly well, & fashion weeks are a recipe for illness (you are continually hungry, tired & sore of foot)so only going to events where I personally know the PR, or designers.

I wore this dress with my black suede and patent ankle boots, and 120 denier black Wolfords. And felt mighty glad of it when I arrived at Aziz, a Moroccan lounge in Midtown, for the Nanette Lepore after-show party. I always forget how badly the majority of fashion people dress, especially in New York. Waaaay too many sequins for my liking and everyone in dull colours. I may have looked like a rainbow threw up on my dress, but at least I was making a nod to current trends. I’m so used to London where people really do follow fashion in a quirky & individual way that it’s easy to forget that it just doesn’t filter down so quickly in America.

Fashion week parties like this are always fun. They aren’t full of celebs and models; they’re more of a way to reward the hard working teams who put the shows together, so they are always most amusing with lots of hair letting down. We drank delicious Belvedere white cosmos and did some dancing. The party ended at midnight (as fashion parties always do – the venue is happy to host parties in the 8pm-12am period, but then they kick everyone out for the paying customers).

I actually sloped off earlier to head downtown to what is supposedly Manhattan’s most luxurious, newest and hottest lounge/club/whatever, 1OAK (stands for One of a Kind). (More of this later.)

The wonderful English men’s shoemaker Oliver Sweeney is intent on taking America (and rightly so), and to that end was throwing an exclusive Fashion Week cocktail party there (until midnight!) along with a young English bespoke tailor.

Who just about nixed his chances of being included in the feature I am writing on English tailors in America for a Very Large newspaper with his stunningly rude behaviour last night. The truly lovely Oliver Sweeney PR took me over to meet him, and we talked about his business and Savile Row. Then the owner of 1OAK came over with some badly dressed, but important guy, introduced him, ignoring me (even though we had already met), and then the three men drew together, with the tailor literally turning his back on me: he & I had been mid conversation and I was just frozen out, & left standing there outside their circle like a muppet. I waited a few minutes to see if he was going to turn back to sign off our conversation, but no.

I was so angry that I left the party. I had trekked down to Meatpacking from Midtown for his American launch and, frankly, journalist or no, expect some politesse. Not impressed sir. You’d better learn some manners if you want to grow your business.

Back in the US(S)A

i'm jetlagged, hungry, not yet unpacked, but very happy to be home. I got in at 11.30last night, but didn't hit my bed 'till 2am, as the combination of customs, a tortuous wait for baggage and an exruciating ride home took forever. My fault tho - owing to my new found notions of thrift, I decided to book myself on the door to door shuttle van ($24), rather than taking a cab ($70), which meant the journey took an hour instead of thirty-five minutes. Still, it's not like I was in a hurry.

Yesterday really was the day for decrying being a single traveller: humping my 100lbs of luggage onto the check-in scales as my trolley tried to escape in the opposite direction, being asked (in all seriousness) by the customs guy where my husband was (I replied - that'll be the imaginary one then), and then having to scrimp on a cab as I was alone. Sigh.

Added to which, I live in a fourth floor walk-up, and it took me another 20 minutes to lug my three bags up the stairs, as I cldn't bear to wake poor L from his beauty sleep at 1.20am. (He had offered, bless him.) Gah.

But regardless of all that, I am thrilled to be home, even if I have been asleep all afternoon rather than working/organising my life. ( I have four HUGE piles of post to open for a start.)

Now I really need to go unpack, so I can find something suitably fash-on to wear tonight to some NYFW parties this evening. And where did I put those fake eyelashes?

What to wear during New York Fashion Week

I keep thinking about how cold it's going to be here in February. I remember buying a down coat in London for my friend M who lives near Lake Geneva/Lac Léman & shipping it out to Switzerland for her, all the time thinking, no, no, no way would I ever wear something as style-deficient as that. Now, after barely surviving the -10F temperatures during New York Fashion Week last February, I know better. I don't just want one, I need one. Sod style, I can always take it off once inside the tents.

Unfortunately they aren't something you can just pick up at a moment's notice and, after my usual meticulous on-line research I think this may be my baby. It has a 700 down fill which appears to be the down flll gold standard. It's also made by North Face, which my mountain goat friends Nick & Nigel assure me is A Good Thing, & it's an emminently affordable $298 at this site.

Then, of course, I discovered this:



The Canada Goose Arctic-Tech Mystique Parka. I thought it was a particularly naff name, until I read that it was inspired by the jacket made for Rebecca Romijn to wear off-camera during the filming of X-Men 2. As they point out, if the Mystique Parka can keep an actress wearing little more than blue body paint warm in Arctic shooting conditions, it's capable of handling whatever the city can throw in anyone's direction.

Unfortunately it's a bit out of my price range (seeing as it is something I have to have rather than something beautiful I lust after) at $549 on the same site