As this Fashion Week gains traction (and quickly struggles to maintain that traction wearing heels in an impending foot of snow), I decided I’d write about one of my favorite experiences from a fashion week gone by.
The setting: NYFW, Tuesday, the afternoon after I'd tripped & fallen at a show. Yes, that happened.
I’ll give you a second to laugh your ass off at me.
All good?
So after it happened I have this odd mixture of feelings, for “hope I didn’t ruin this for anyone” to “kind of embarrassed” to “holy shit, awesome for an article.” But I’m also determined to somehow make up for it at the after-party that night.
The venue doesn’t need much description– dimly lit, Billboard 100 music, groups of people mingling around densely populated tables stocked for alcohol consumption. As I get there, my mission seems to be going well. I make the joke that people should keep me away from any of the ledges. Several girls are, for some reason, super down to dance with me. Several men are even clearer, with one of them approaching a girl I'm with and, with my attention elsewhere, apparently saying “He’s mine bitch I’ll kill you.” I was putting the fall behind me, baby!
Anyway, it was a blast, particularly to someone who never got invited to parties in high school. And hopefully people went away thinking of me less as “That kid who fell” and more as “That kid who danced like the guy on Blue’s Clues and knew all the lyrics to the Billy Joel songs.”
Yeah, it's like that.
…except for one woman, who almost certainly put me in her own made-up category. Because within 20 seconds of arriving she was dancing nearby when her friend knocked my drink out of my hand, sending it all over my crotch and all over her dress.
Normally this wouldn’t be a huge deal, drinks get spilled all the time at dance parties. Except this is a fashion after-party, and you’re not spilling a drink on some girl in a GAP skirt, you’re spilling it on someone wearing legit vintage Versace. Honestly it was just my fucking luck that day. I was pretty much waiting for my mom to call me with some terrible news, like my 13-year-old Beagle had died or something.
"Mom, I can’t hear you. What’s that? I was adopted?“
She ended up being pretty cool about it though, and her friend was actually the makeup artist on the show, and we all kind of hung out periodically throughout the night to give me some measure of self-worth back, and…cool whatever, this isn’t the story though.
Next day, Wednesday after Fall Down Tuesday. I go out with some people from my agency. I get a text from Spilled Drink Girl, who invites me to a party for the Marc Jacobs show the following night. Now when the agency people ask what I’m doing tomorrow, I tell them this...and they lose their fucking shit. They, who got me into this party, a party which includes Jay-Z and a then-pregnant Beyoncé and Nas celebrating his fucking birthday...THEY are jealous of ME for getting into this OTHER party. Apparently this Marc Jacobs show is the most epic fashion thing on planet Earth (that month anyway), and consequently the party is the most epic fucking party next to something straight out of an 80’s movie.
So of course it wasn’t going to go smoothly.
The day after spilling the drink, I have a casting at the Standard Hotel. I go to it– it’s around 8pm– and I’m on Twitter as I’m waiting in the hallway. And Twitter is basically blowing up about how awesome the Marc Jacobs show is. How it’s like a fusion of a musical and a fashion show, how it’s like setting the bar for how a show should be, how every fashion fan on the planet would fuck him until his Spongebob tattoo turned red.
He literally has this picture of Spongebob as a tattoo. Literally! Google it!
I’m following along and starting to get pretty excited myself (as if I already wasn’t, I'd probably get excited about being invited to a 4-year-old’s birthday party). I get done with my casting and text Spilled Drink Girl. She says they’re leaving the show right then. But since I’m at the Standard Hotel, and the after-party is at the Dream Hotel, that means I’m only a couple blocks away– I’ll get there well before they do. So I decide to walk around the block a few times, just kind of wait until they arrive.
Except once I get close to the Dream Hotel, it’s just a line of fucking limos pulling through the street. Like, limo after limo. Did you ever play that game Snood? The one where you shoot those little monster faces at a brick wall and try to get them into groups of three so they explode?
Yeah this has nothing to do with that, but god damn there were a lot of limos.
I decide to abandon my idea of walking around the block for fear of never crossing the street through the limo parade. So I literally sit across from the entrance to the hotel, a little ways down the road, and take a newspaper out of my manly messenger bag. I text SDG, who tells me she and her friends are on their way...except they got wristbands after the show, so now she doesn’t know if she can get me in.
I finish reading about some random thing in the newspaper, probably how Mike Pence is entering a hot dog eating contest or some shit so people will like him better (they won’t), when I get another text from SDG. She tells me that they’re inside the party now, that they checked their wristbands at the door and that without one I probably couldn’t get in. She does encourage me to try anyway, but when I ask her if she’ll come to the door to give me leverage– to say, like, “hey let this kid in”– she says she doesn’t think she can.
Essentially I’ve been invited to a party by someone who wasn’t allowed to invite me to the party, and I’m outside, by myself, with no way to get in. ...i.e. what is also known as “My High School Experience.”
Sidenote, I tend to compare a lot of what happens as a model to high school, and there’s two really good reasons for that. One, high school wasn’t that long ago, and regardless how long ago it was, most people can relate to that shit. Two, there’s a real high school vibe put out by a lot of people in the industry. There’s a sense of entitlement, of intrinsic knowledge, like “We are inherently better than you because we fundamentally know things that you don’t.” Or, simply, it’s people who think they’re popular. Fashion is, stripped of its potential for artistic expression, basically a popularity contest, and if you’re not one of the cool kids then you’re just not one of the damn cool kids. This applies to everyone from designers to casting directors to assistants to models. That’s not to say there’s not objective skill involved, just that subjective bullshit tends to win the day. Welcome to Fashion High.
This isn’t totally a high school situation, however, because I actually have another party to go to instead (the one my agency people are at), and that would never have happened to me in a million years. But I do react to it as if it was high school, and by that I mean I said “Fuck this shit” and this is what I did:
I walk up to the entrance of the Dream Hotel, where no less than 4 giant suit-and-tie-clad men stand guard, with some folks mingling together next to the roped-off line of people waiting to get in. Limos are parked along the curb waiting to be in groups of 3 so they can explode.
I pause as I get up to the giants, just a millisecond, just long enough so that if they close the gap between each other to create a giant man-wall I can pivot to the side and say I was just innocently walking on the sidewalk the whole time, and why the fuck would I want to come to your party anyway? You know Mitt Romney’s in a hot dog eating contest right now, right?
But they don’t close the gap, in fact they don’t even react to me, and instead I waltz right past them and into the lobby of the Dream Hotel. At this point I calmly yet furiously text SDG and ask her what floor the party’s on. She excitedly yet confusedly asks what I mean by “What floor?,” as this party’s on the first floor. I calmly/confusedly/etc. look around at the mass of people in the lobby, trying to determine if I’m actually inside the party right now despite the fact that there is no music and no one throws a party in the lobby of a hotel.
I spot a less-giant but no less suit-clad man directing minor traffic in the corner though, and I decide to slip over and take a peek. Sure enough he’s moving traffic into a smaller room, where yet another suit-man guards a doorway. And it is through this doorway, my brain is now telling me courtesy of my ears, that the real party is thumping.
I slowly take off my hoodie (fashion!) as I gather myself and attempt to look nonchalant– the key in these situations– and gently stroll up to the semi-giant as if to enter the party. He asks if I have a wristband. With all the confidence of someone certainly invited to this gig, I ask where to get a wristband. He tells me out front. I thank him for his help, ostinsably because he has told a legitimate guest where to check in, but in reality because he’s revealed to me the next step in the epic quest to get one of those fucking wristbands.
I return to the front and find a lady outside with a clipboard. She asks for my name. I tell her, knowing full well that it’s not on the list, or that if it is, it’s probably that other guy with my same name. As she flips through her clipboard pages fruitlessly, I tell her that I’m supposed to be there with Spilled Drink Girl, who I know has to be on the list.
This stops Clipboard Girl in her tracks, and she sympathetically raises her eyes to meet mine and says: “I’m sorry, there’s no plus-1’s to this party.”
To a normal human, this is the end of the road. I was invited as a plus-1 to a party that has no plus-1’s, requires a wristband, has a guest list, and employs an army of Hulk-sized men in dinnerwear.
But instead, trying not to miss a beat, I say...
“Well I’m a model and I repped the show, I just didn’t get a wristband after.”
Now, take a second to soak this in. Of course I didn’t rep the Marc Jacobs show. I’m a DUDE. The show was females-only. But this makes perfect sense to Clipboard Girl, and she replies with “Oh, well talk to Dave [name changed] over there, he has override ability.”
“Dave” as I affectionately call him is on the sidewalk near the limos, laughing and having a good ol’ time. Though I can’t entirely recall, I think he may be wearing a pinky ring. Either way, it’s clear he’s in charge. And so I go up to him and repeat what I said to Clipboard Girl– that I’m a model, I repped the show, and need a wristband.
And he responds with exactly this: “Well I gave Susan a certain amount, she should’ve given them to you guys.”
Now if he had said any other person’s name– any other name, fucking Brad Smith or Hermione Granger or Jonas Salk, fucking ANYTHING– I’m dead in the water. Here I am saying that I’m a model from the show, and here is the guy in charge of the after-party saying yeah, cool, he already gave someone the wristbands to give to the models. There is basically no recourse from here. It’s pretty much hey, good try, head over to the other party, probably get poked fun at a bit by your agency people, have a great night and enjoy still living and breathing as a human being.
But he didn’t say any other person’s name. He said “Susan” [name also changed]. And I fucking know this Susan. Or know of I guess, I mean we don’t exactly paint each other’s toenails or anything, and besides what kind of boring story would this be if I was just like “Oh then I called my friend and she pulled some strings and I had a nice evening!” What the hell.
I know Susan, though, because she was the first person I ever went on a go-see for. Literally the first thing my agency ever texted me to do was to visit her office, and so it was basically my introduction into the modeling world. Not only that, but Susan cast me that day for a magazine shoot, which ended up being a fucking blast. And since I was and am such a naive piece of shit, I actually got her and her assistant’s email off the call sheet and emailed them both, telling them something like “Thank you so much for an awesome day!” which she probably read and was like “cool blah blah DELETE, I have actual important shit to do.”
But back to the sidewalk with Dave. He says he gave SUSAN wristbands to give the models. I tell him I just wasn’t given one. And he says, kind of looking around for something better to do with his time, “Well do you have her phone number?”
Well no, I don’t have her phone number. But, from my prior naïveté, I have her email address.
“Okay just email her and tell her Dave is out front and wants to know about your wristband.”
Now, I said I have Susan’s email address. But I’m not going to ACTUALLY email her, a legit major casting director, to get me into a party I’m not supposed to be in, for a show I wasn’t actually in.
So I do this.
I step to the side of the ropes on the sidewalk and type up an email to her on my phone. It says:
Jesus that's a lot of fake names.
But rather than send this to the actual Susan, and have her go “wtf is this kid nuts?” I simply take out a few of the letters in her email address. This of course means that the email is being sent to no one, and I immediately get one of those creepy MAILER DAEMON messages. But it doesn’t change the fact that, on my phone, it looks like I sent the message.
Then I text a friend of mine, and soon-to-be accomplice in this plot. I tell her that I’ll send another text in a second, and ask that she just send the second text right back to me. The same exact thing, just copy and text it right back. And then I send her this:
“Hey [Awkward Model], I put your name on the list, did you not get one after the show? You should be good”
She texts it back. Then I delete the entire message history on my phone for that friend EXCEPT for that last text– so it looks like it’s the only one she’s sent me. Then I change my friend’s contact information to…you got it...“Susan.”
Jesus that's an old iPhone screenshot.
I return to Dave. I say hey, I sent Susan this– show him the email, conveniently not scrolling down to show the DELIVERY FAILED message– and that Susan sent me back this– and I show him what I actually just typed up to my friend and had re-sent to me.
Dave reads all this thoroughly, then turns, addresses the Clipboard Girl behind him, and says…
“Get him a wristband.”
Clipboard Girl says it’s the last one she has, that they need to get more...and then she gives it to me.
I hold onto it for dear life and try to stay calm as I return to the thumping door and show the suit-guard there. In fact I actually have him put it on for me– I’m not only terrible at doing that in general, but I didn’t want to take the chance of dropping it or something ridiculous while trying to do it on the way. Awkward, remember.
And then I finally walk through the doors. It’s dark, the music is blaring, there’s a giant arch beyond which masses of people are partying. A few girls stand off to the side with clipboards before the arch though, and they stop me before I go through.
At this point my mind is racing. My name’s not on the clipboard, I’m not supposed to be at this party, and the only reason I’m in is because of what happened out front with Dave. If they stop me now, I’ll have to find a way to pull Dave away from his fun and over here to convince them, and he already seemed not all that interested in my problem from the start.
Before I can come up with a solution though, one of the girls speaks.
“Would you like your bag checked?”
I still have my fucking messenger bag. I kind of nod in awe and hand it over, but still stand there, like a little puppy who just got caught chewing up a shoe but instead of getting yelled at is now being given the other one to tear apart. I’m not sure how much time passes, but after handing off my bag one of the girls leans forward and says, in what has to be the sexiest, most excellent voice in all of human existence…
“Have fun.”
And that was it.
I was in.
And fun was had. There was a lot of dancing, and at one point I found myself in the middle of a giant circle as I provided Blues-Cluesian entertainment. More girls made clear they might have no aversion to fucking me. A few guys assured them that, unfortunately for them, I was batting for the other team. At one point I was told one of them referred to me as a “faggotress,” as in “Oh honey that boy you been dancin’ with is a FAGGOTRESS!” I’m not entirely sure what a faggotress is (it’s not even on Urban Dictionary!), but on this night, it was a badge of motherfuckin’ honor.
Celebrities were apparently in abundance, some I knew, some I didn’t (“If a person that you’ve never heard of is a famous person, does that mean they’re still famous?” in the wise words of Kid President). The former notably included Mick Jagger, though he stayed underneath the main floor eating and I never got to see him. Dakota Fanning was notably there too, and I say “notably” because the attention surrounding her made it seem more like a birthday party for her than the after-party for Marc Jacobs.
Marc was there, of course, in all his Spongebob glory. And the president of Marc Jacobs, Robert Duffy. He made his rounds saying hi to his employees in attendance, who he apparently knows in ridiculous detail. When Spilled Drink Girl (heretofore known as Couldn’t Get Me Into The Party Girl) shook his hand and said her name, he said “Yes I know, you work in women’s.” And when I shook his hand right after, saying it was nice to meet him, he just stared at me. Just stared. Didn’t say anything back. Didn’t move his mouth. Just stared and moved on.
Because this guy with the photographic memory probably approved the guest list and knew I wasn’t supposed to be there. That I had, in fact, Ferris-Buellered my way into his after-party.
But if fashion is high school...who else would you wanna be?