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Fashion week is strange. Months and months of work go into a show that happens once and lasts 15 minutes. (After Calvin Klein, I saw some PR girls dramatically collapsing into each other, saying, “It’s over, it’s really over.”). Seeing celebrities starts to feel quite natural, and the fashion people you see every day start to feel like family—albeit a strange sort of family that follows you around every day but rarely speaks to you…

Sitting in close proximity with strangers on bleachers for several
hours a day, you overhear things while waiting for a show to start.
Yesterday, I overheard one retailer, who was perhaps in her 50s,
talking about how fashion has changed so much since she began in the
business. "There just isn’t that one defining look of the season that
you have to have now," she said…

Chaos. That was the scene at the New York Armory at Lexington and 25th, where Marc Jacobs held both of his shows (one for his main collection and another for his Marc by Marc line). Spindly-heeled passengers spilled out of black cars gathered in a giant bottleneck. Flashbulbs were going off everywhere. Walking to the armory from the East Village, I rounded the corner and heard a man say in his thick New York accent, “Look over dere. It’s all the fashionistas, goin’ to see…

MARC JACOBS
I was speaking with a few fashion friends who are European, and they were saying how visiting New York makes them feel like they’re in a movie. What New York gives them is a strong emotional experience. This is what fashion, at its best, should do. Marc Jacobs delivered that on Monday night, judging by the reactions of hard-nosed editors and reporters. Definitely a YSL tribute mixed with so many other elements: a tribute to America, to the American abroad. And all this set to Gershwin music! It slayed me…

Two days feels like two weeks when you are counting your life
in high-heel time. Let me explain high-heel time. High-heel time
moves like regular time if you’re seated. If you’re walking, it feels
double as long as normal time. And during those moments spent
shuffling oh-so-slowly down the bleachers and towards the door—leaving a fashion show is very similar to leaving a small concert—high-heel time means…

At the Gap presentation on Sunday afternoon, the first spring
collection under creative director Patrick Robinson, power editors
buzzed around drinking fruit punch and looking totally unfazed by
the heat. After spending a summer away from the fashion scene, the
clothes on the editors’ backs looked shockingly good. I’m
seeing a lot of summer looks still—gladiator heels, harem pants,
paper-thin T-shirts (the 300-dollar variety that drape in a lovely
way but pill the instant you touch them, god forbid you carry a
handbag…

New York Fashion Week’s Spring 2009 season kicked off today, and I’ll be your guide to the shows and parties in the next few days.

The biggest difference I’m noticing so far between fashion week in New York and fashion week in Paris—Paris, I have done for a few seasons now; New York, it’s my first time—is that New York is much more commercially sponsored…