Or why I found shows at the Lincoln Center like stepping into The Hunger Games ’ Capitol. Model tributes!
Frankly I had a hard time picturing myself amongst its crowds. Armed with a preconceived notion of the industry as an elite pastime of the super wealthy, I suspected fashion and I had little in common. And yet there is something positive to be said about an event which fully encapsulates a sense of decorum long lost in American life.
I couldn't help but find myself overwhelmed by the presence of so many different types of people, dressed to the nines (and then some) at 11AM on a Friday morning. Who were they? How many tireless hours had gone into each and every element of their pristine outfits? Was this the moment they had been waiting for all year?
Ashley Perez / BuzzFeed via What New Yorkers Really Think Of Fashion Week
As I wandered around Lincoln Center, casually dressed in a pair of blue jeans rolled at the cuff and a new white cotton t-shirt from the Gap, I found myself hoping that no one would notice the copious amounts of coffee I had spilt on my shirt in the rush to make it uptown for my first foray into fashion. Perhaps my tried and true statement necklace from J. Crew (about as fancy as I get in terms of my own fashion) would help steel my anxieties as I prepared to enter a world I had only ever seen in movies and magazines.
Pulling out my phone, I showed the QR code representing my ticket and coveted seat at a show to the bouncer stationed outside the famous white "tents." I made it inside, and so far no one had called me a fraud. In fact, no one had really given me a second glance, good or bad, because everyone was seemingly too busy trying to get noticed to notice anyone but themselves.
An entire sea of people existing just as much to look as be looked at, a living museum of sorts. Except instead of the subjects appearing quietly on the walls, they were walking about, noisily, excitedly and idly chatting as they waited for something interesting to happen. And yet while the general electricity of Fashion Week existed all around us, nothing too crazy really happened. Such is the nature of the industry's over-production that fashion's fun spontaneity is now often missing.
Instead, simply, a mass of well-groomed people stood around — quietly assessing one another for any insight into the other's relative importance. Relative, that is, to others milling around in the vicinity. Much like the rest of New York, and perhaps society at large, most of the attendees seemed to be near-solely concerned with the little screens in front of them. (Or, in the case of those people brandishing iPads, not so small.) They instagrammed, facebooked, and tweeted every moment they could squeeze out until the essence New York Fashion Week had turned into little more than a selfie-centric #NYFW.
