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These men want your clothes

It's currently downtime between shows. Backstage make-up artists and hair stylists are furiously working on models. Chatting in a salad bar, a makeup artist for Alex Roi tells me that they begin work up to three hours in advance and each girl is on the runway for a total of two and a half minutes. Models scrub off the face paint the minute their job is done and rush to their next booking.

While backstage may be a-flutter, it's calm in the front of the house right now, if a little wobbly. Lotus, the elite nightclub who has set up a slick bar under the tents, is lubricating the crowd with its daily offer of free cocktails. A crowd favorite is the “French Martini”, which is vodka, lime juice and a healthy does of Chambord liqueur.

Speaking of Chambord, the spirits company has its own booth here, a complementary coat-check. A free wardrobe to stow your cloak in is not normally worth writing about, but you haven’t seen the coat-checkers. During fashion week even the cloakroom workers are male models. Some ladies seem disappointed that all the lads are taking off them is their coats.

I also spied one attendee catnapping (perhaps having snagged one too many of those free cocktails?) but, a true dedicated follower of fashion, even in her sleep she still managed to clutch her Gucci purse. - Sarah

Britney and bling rings

Saturday’s start was sedate with a thinned crowd presumably recovering from Saturday night’s gold-lamed Baby Phat show, the clothing line produced by Kimmora Lee Simons, formerly music mogul Russell Simmons’ missus. Britney Spears came out for the show, and so did, umm… her left breast. (insert “Oops I did it again” joke here). Guests came dripping in furs that last year brought protesters with lots of angry snarls, but thankfully no paint.

Sparkling rings brightened up the chilled atmosphere under the tents, courtesy of chef-turned-designer Barry Wine, formerly of the illustrious Giraffe restaurant. He was under the tent giving pretty girls his jewels to wear as in vivo advertisements. Since shuttering the restaurant’s doors says the former foodie, “I cook with bling, not butter.” Giraffe is credited with introducing the now ubiquitous “money purse,” a tiny dumpling shaped like a sack of cash. Accordingly, some of Wine’s rings are gold-dipped versions of these nibbles (right), others feature a tiny sterling spoon (above). Another witty bauble is called “I’ve been married before;” It’s a ring made from a tiny lock with 10 engagement rings hanging off of it.

Torpor at BCBG

BCBG Max Azria Friday, Day 1, 3pm
BCBG’s Spring collection might have been good, but it was hard to drag your eyes away from the intentionally stringy hair and wan make-up of the already dissipated looking models. The whole vibe at the show was one of sick-bed torpor, the models — who are customarily poker-faced actually grimaced their way down the catwalk, and the audience barely clapped. Exciting spectating was limited to seeing Donald Trump’s progeny Vanessa and a blinged-out bloke with a diamante-encrusted New York Yankees cap and a dazzling silver-dipped Louis Vuitton. I saw the same cap five seconds later on another, chinchilla-wrapped gentleman. Maybe there was a sale?

-- Sarah

Kim Cattrall and sad goodie bags

Attending to America's most powerful man is a tough job, so it makes sense that his wife, the First Lady of the United States, indulges in a little R&R, soaking up the scene runway-side at the The Heart Truth Red Dress Collection show. Ok, so this show isn’t all flash and glamour (though models such as Sex and the City’s Kim Catrall and singer Rihanna added a gloss of it), it aims to raise awareness about heart disease in women.

Amusingly enough, it nearly sent half the audience into cardiac arrest: After guests had gotten comfy in their seats they suddenly were asked to leave the auditorium—without their purses. With attendees toting handbags worth hundreds, even thousands, of pounds, the prospect of abandoning them so a guard could rifle through them was not the most appealing. But, good citizens all, the audience dispatched themselves from the tent so that Mrs. Bush’s muscle guard could ensure the First Lady’s safety. Health conscious to the end, The Heart Truth’s sad goodie bags contained tea and toothpaste.

More exciting freebies were to be had under the main lobby tent. Ringed with vendors trying to court the style-makers, each mini booth offers some gratis treat for spectators. By far the best was a wine-vending machine, which dispensed booze straight from the bottle with the push of a button. Shipping company DHL offered free espresso for a “quick pick up” (geddit?) and outside pretty girls handed out coupons for free taxi rides courtesy of…Cotton? (I don’t get it)

Strangest sighting: Thus far, it has to be the male model wearing a skirt of mobile phone products. Let's just say no one was checking out the phones.

-- Sarah

Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Kick-off Party at The Box

Ultra-chic retro nightclub “The Box” isn’t even officially open yet, but you couldn’t tell that from the packed house Thursday night, where the beautiful people were crammed in like sardines (now we know why they are so skinny) to toast the kick-off of fashion week. The Box, whose board of trustees includes luminaries such as Moby and Rachel Weisz, is outfitted like an old-school cabaret lounge and is artfully and intentionally decrepit; the peeling wallpaper is on purpose, less so the toilet doorknob that came off in my hand. Adrian Brody, Keith Richard’s daughter Theodora and Donna Karen (right) were in attendance, as was the New York Times (read its story). They sipped free drinks and listened to a live performance from a band called Shiny Toy Guns whose “electro/indie/rock” thrashing seemed wildly out of place in the chandelier-festooned Box. Also slightly out of place was the luminous gold 2008 Mercedes Benz parked out front by the velvet rope as a showpiece, complete with winged doors that were straight out of Back to the Future.

Lisa Perry Style launch party

The tents that will showcase New York City fashion week are barely up, and the runway shows won't start for another few days, but NYC is already steaming up with fashion fever. Tuesday night, a full four days before Fashion Week commences, saw the Soho launch of new designer and Manhattan socialite Lisa Perry’s mod Sixties-inspired first collection. Actually, according to Ms. Perry, not just the debut, but all her future collections will be riffs of the swinging style, as it’s the only trend she herself has worn since, well, the Age of Aquarius. Accordingly, her party and mini-dresses were splashed with Day-Glo colours, polka dots and whimsy. Waiters wandered among the dresses — which were displayed on mannequins arranged shoulder-to-shoulder like a platoon of Edie Sedgwicks — with trays of ironic Sixties canapés. The coin-sized cheese burgers and matchstick slivers of grilled-cheese sandwiches dunked in shot glasses of tomato soup were a wink at antiquated ideas of high-style hostessing. Or maybe, with several Vogue editors in attendance, the microscopic food was tailored to the fashion guest-list’s eating habits?

-- Sarah 

Kicking off New York fashion week

In the days before the shows start under the tents in Bryant Park, Manhattan’s hair salons and ubiquitous nail salons (one conservative estimate says there are 338 in this thirteen-mile-long island) are jampacked with people buffing, polishing and highlighting in anticipation of the fashion face-off of the upcoming week. The eyes at New York City Fashion Week aren't only the catwalk

Packed with editors, subeditors, writers and staff of fashion glossies, not to mention buyers and merchandisers of luxury retailers worldwide, the sea of folding chairs are where the latest must-have items, and cutting edge clothes are sported. They speak fashionese and are able to define words like “peplum” (that’s a flounce below the waist) and “aglet” (that’s the plastic bit at the end of a shoelace). They are also the people whose opinions can make or break a designer’s career, and they are the people who determine the trends you will be wearing each season.

It is a universe populated by people who don’t leave home without at least a trio of designer items on their bodies and a bag costing a month’s rent on their arms. These are the men and women who use the hundred pound face creams their magazines hawk.

Seated among their peers under the tents at New York’s Bryant Park where fashion week is held, they are in intense competition for the most stylish and in-the-know; this week they turn up the fashion heat.  Accordingly the spectators break out their Sunday best, they are impossibly beautiful, impeccably groomed and chicly outfitted because it is an essential part of their profession: Like a builder in a hard hat and tool belt, they are in a sense, in uniform, sporting the tools of their trade.

Here's a great FAQ from a former Donna Karan designer about the shows in New York

Also, check out the official New York Fashion Week site

-- Sarah