The virtues of staring

I feel guilty for staring.  After all, these are human beings. That’s when UPS beefcake grins and says he’ll take a picture with a fan. A woman in a red hat coos at the ensemble of my RICH 4-year-old nemesis, and the nearby mother of RICH beams, then instructs her daughter to do a twirl for the admiring stranger. Polka Dot, undeterred by the fact that the swag train don’t stop here anymore, strikes a pose for a woman with a very large camera.

That’s when I realize: This is Fashion Week.  Objectify away.  It’s actually rude not to gawk at the native’s costumes.  After all, college funds aren’t being frittered away and teams of underpaid seamstresses aren’t going blind in Sri Lanka so that I can respectfully avert my eyes from a fabulous garment. 

Of course, for all the grade-A people watching, there are downsides to the main tent.  It’s not the inner sanctum. It’s the waiting room for people who aren’t on TV. You may gain entry, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll catch more than a glimpse of Paris Hilton or Carmen Electra, or even that girl from Laguna Beach (who apparently has an entourage and gets to breathe the same air as Anna Wintour).

It is, however, a guarantee that, between attempts to finagle your way into a full show, you can make the rounds and gather C-grade swag from a variety of distributors.

“New York is very commercial, not like Paris,”  says a photographer. He sees me taking notes as women clutching thousand-dollar designer bags queue up three, four, even five times in succession for free shots of flavored water from the Aquafina stand.

Culture shock
All around the tent, fashion writers, industry types and ladies who lunch (most teetering on enormous heels, some strangely at peace with the fact that they’re wearing leggings) make laps around the corporate sponsors, loading up on what’s good.

Slide show   On the catwalk See images from designers' Spring 2007 collections.

Later, at the BCBG show, I stare down from a perch atop the back row hoping to see  a few celebs. One woman towards the front catches my eye. I recognize her as someone who took Aquafina for all it was worth. She is scribbling furiously, giving each model who passes an appreciative nod and leaning in to her friend as if to say “I’m tempted to buy the whole line.”  I wondered if she partially finances her fashion habit through subsisting on samples. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Fashion Week is a bit of culture shock, but after a day or two, I’m nearly acclimated.  I’m gawking without shame. I have a T-shirt from Perry Ellis and a perfume sample for something called Sexy Beast, which I did not know was a perfume intended for dogs until I noticed that my neck hair had a particularly glossy sheen and smelled like bone marrow.

As for tomorrow: I’m back and better prepared.  Sorry mom.  I’m wearing my most impractical heels and, should I find my Bedazzler, some shorts that read, “Take a Picture, It Will Last Longer.”

Paige Ferrari is a freelance writer in New York City.

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