Yesterday, Fashion Week Made Me Sick

Image from the Not-So-Old archives of Gick.

I did not go on Saturday. Saturday was rainy and miserable. Too yucky to be an uninvited hanger on. However, I did end up at both Saks and Barney's, and I can report that, attested love for ready-to-wear aside, not a single Lord or Lady of Design was at the stores fluffing their merchandise to make sure it was displayed to perfection. Sure, they love the ready-to-wear...I've got my doubts.

Yesterday, I did walk by in the late afternoon. It wasn't raining, but there was a cruel, cold wind. Surrounding the enormous white tent were only ancient trees, bare cobblestones, empty benches and bistro tables, all blasted by the pitiless gale. Around back, a literal handful of chilled amateurs lurked on an overhanging balustrade to echo the snapshots of the handful of professional photogs by the door below. No pictures were taken while I watched. No one of import came or went. But through any glass door I passed, I had the sense of a milling crowd inside.

On the front steps, a few tall and/or snazzily dressed types loitered. There was a cart nearby selling pretzels and chicken kebabs. I was so cold and agitated, I didn't even ask which one models preferred.

I began to have the fancy of the tent as a shifting distending entity, distorted by the shapes of elbows and heads pressing against its straining seams, like a thousand Alices had eaten their cakes and were sprouting ever-longer limbs. I waited for a giantess' foot or a seven-foot nose to tear through one of the walls, but it never did. This flight of imagination should have been my first clue. The wicked west wind carried some feverish spore or beastie deep into my lungs, and today I have an unsettled cranium and a painful wheeze like a fourteen year-old model before her morning's first cigar.

I had planned to go back down to blighted Bryant Park on Tuesday for a nosier look, but we'll see how my nose cooperates. Further, in two days, I'm scheduled to plant myself into the upholstered Petri dish of a blood-clot inducing transcontinental flight. It will either cure me, or I'll at least leave this mortal veil of misery.

AlmostGirl is also feeling lame in her coverage, with much less reason may I note, and says the Glam forums are good. Perhaps I should take the medicine of the Wasabi Hangover Bath treatment at Fashion Tribes. You, on the other hand, can get legit, on-site coverage and FW podcasts there, too.