Changing perspectives on Fashion Week

If you live in a major city like New York, the importance of Fashion Week is not something you take lightly. Being an NYU student, it is not uncommon to have friends who are involved in Fashion Week, whether they’re simply lending a helping hand, or have a larger role. Studying so close to SoHo, Manhattan’s hub for all things fashion related, makes it difficult to forget those crucial weeks in September and February.

Admittedly, I still prefer not to run into statuesque models while I’m plodding to my 9am class in sweatpants (or Irina Shayk on a Monday night trip to the supermarket—she is absolutely lovely), but I have learnt to appreciate the splendor of Fashion Week since I re-located to New York for university.

Last week, if you stepped out of almost any building on campus, it almost certainly hit you, especially if you had to make the trek to 194 Mercer, which peers into the thick of the cobbled, designer-laden streets of SoHo from across Houston.

Yet we still tend to get most of our information through the Instagram accounts of various fashion bloggers and models, and it’s easy to forget just how close we are to it all. A few streets away, while we sat through our lectures, Fashion Week came and went once more, and with it, the frenzy of booked up restaurants, celebrity sightings and the Internet’s attempts at deciphering Kanye West’s latest rant.

It is always a much beloved event that is keenly anticipated every autumn and winter. Whether you consider the designer’s new line and their execution of it cutting-edge or not, it ignites many passionate conversations about the business, and attracts people from all over the world.

The excitement that descended on the already buzzing city was tangible. It was thrilling to read about the events, packed with many people I admire, that took place only a few blocks away from my apartment, and I was interested to see how the designers utilized the city for their shows (although I did not envy the guests at the open air Moncler show in Lincoln Center on Thursday the 11th, one of the coldest days New York has kindly treated us to thus far). New York Fashion Week has been an integral part of the city’s allure since its debut in 1943, and we can surely continue to look forward to it for many years to come.

And although I kicked myself for not remembering that it was Fashion Week when I tried to get a dinner reservation at a reasonable time that weekend, I stopped and thought about how incredible it is to be in such close proximity of what has become a global phenomenon, allowing me a bit of my own insight into an industry that reigns in major cities like New York, London, Paris, Milan and Berlin.