Fashion Week: Lives of the Rich and the Ridiculous
I had the pleasure and exquisite privilege (sarcasm be damned) to get my first real Fashion Week experience yesterday. What can I say, people, it is something. They should make a documentary about this, not the shows themselves but the colorful characters that inhabit that all too perfect world. In a span of a day (if you dont count some crazy fashion party at Tavern on the Green on Thursday night), I have seen more perfect hair, perfect clothes, perfect bodies, perfect fake lips/boobs/fill in the blanks to last me a lifetime. And no, i'm not talking about the stick figures with protruding hip bones that graced the runways. I'm talking about mother and daughter combos, equally dolled up, brimming with every designer piece you can imagine (combined in one outfit!), waltzing hand in hand from show to show. I'm talking about 11-13 year old girls, each wielding a Blackberry or an iPhone, wearing a ridiculously expensive designer outfit and Chanel bags, and sipping...get ready for this, ESPRESSO! For the love of everything that is sacred, explain to me why, oh WHY, does an 11 year old need a Blackberry? What super important business meeting or urgent email is she missing? Why are they allowed to drink coffee that's too strong even for adults? What happened to their childhoods, why are they even at Fashion Week instead of playing with Barbies like I did when I was 11? Does having a lot of money automatically remove any common sense from their mothers' perfectly styled but completely empty heads??? The world is full of future Paris Hiltons and that is truly scary.
But no, that 's not even half of it. I'm talking about ex-porn star Jenna Jameson pushing me out of the way after the unveiling of Nicky Hilton's new fashion line Nicholai (which, by the way, sucked, FYI, nothing original in there to save her little socialite life, except maybe the name of the fashion line itself) And boy, that Jenna Jameson, the skankiest walking twig i've ever seen in my entire life. Just because she suddenly decided she's going to market herself as a business woman and not a porn star (which is really just a more marketable name for someone who sells herself for money, one step above a common hooker), took out her ginormous implants and cut her hair in a stylish assymetrical bob, now all of a sudden that makes her someone with class? The woman has a neck tattoo that spans the entire back of her neck! We sat 2 rows behind her and it was truly mind boggling to see a cloud of photographers descend on her like a tornado. And after they spent 40 minutes taking a picture of her from every angle, they came back 10 minutes later only to start all over again! The guy next to me very shrewdly pointed out that "Porn stars are people too", which sent our entire row in fits of laughter. Across the runway, Brandon Davis (the only thing i know about him is that he called Lindsay Lohan "Firecrotch"....or something.... from what i gather he's pretty much the male version of Paris Hilton) turned out to be a disgusting greasy-looking fella, the kind you need to wear gloves around just so you dont dirty your hands. And his friend kept shooting sleazy look in our general direction. Classy crowd, to say the least.
That's not to say this was all a waste, we saw 2 really beautiful fashion shows prior to Nicky Hilton's spectacle and saw some way more interesting and classy celebrities like hotelier Andre Balazs, Veronica Webb, and the main players from America's Next Top Model (with exception of Tyra Banks herself) All that of course was exciting. But as exhilarating as it sometimes felt, i then couldn't help but get overwhelmed by the feeling of just how ridiculous, fake and superficial everyone there is. It was like a set of Devil Wears Prada...from an alternate universe! And to think i wanted to work in Fashion when i was younger......whew, dodged that bullet! So all in all, more than anything else, it was just plain exhausting. I do recommend checking it out once in a lifetime, just to experience it for yourselves but whatever you do: 1) make sure to eat beforehand, naturally they don't believe in food at these things and 2) stay the hell out of Jenna Jameson's way.