Fashion Week redux

Nonoo S/S 2013

 Now that I've finally got some proper rest I feel like I can look back on the beginning of this month with some clarity (though not a whole lot - things are a blur). For me, fashion week started Wednesday, September 5 with four presentations, one show and a few quick visits to Lucky's Fashion and Beauty Blogger conference (aka FABB). It ended Wednesday, September 12 when I exited Lincoln Center after the Vivienne Tam show, took a detour to Magnolia Bakery for cupcakes, went home, at the cupcakes and went to sleep around 10 p.m. Fashion week was...fun, exhilarating, stressful, tiring and beautiful. I went to more than 30 events over the course of that seven days. It might as well be the beginning of field hockey season for the number of blisters and band-aids my feet and ankles have been sporting. I got my picture taken a few times and saw other people get their picture taken a million times (the first time I arrived at Milk I was taken aback by the clamoring crowd of photographers out front. Peering into the crowd, I spotted Leandra Medine posing amid the din. I took more pictures with my iPhone than I thought possible. I spotted a lot of well-known editors and even more bloggers and even a few celebrities. I felt like I was stalking Linda Fargo for awhile. I saw a lot of creativity and a lot of beauty.

Lisa Perry S/S 2013

 I've been entranced by the fashion world for a while, starting in my teen years when I began to read fashion magazines in earnest. Then came the endless poring over runway images online and clicking constantly to the next page of street style blogs. So when I found myself in the middle of fashion week - at Lincoln Center or Milk or somewhere along the West Side Highway, it was more than a little surreal. I still did all the things I've done in the past - reading blogs and checking Tumblr and looking at street style - only this time I'd notice someone that I'd seen, or recognize where a picture was taken. Seeing runway or presentation shots from shows I had actually attended pop up on my Tumblr dashboard was both odd and enthralling. It seems strange to think that less than a year ago I was living (primarily) in the Chicago suburbs and going to school and now I'm living in New York, working full time and going to fashion week for work. And though fashion week was even more exhausting than any crazy finals week, I can't imagine anything that I would have rather been doing.

Tanya Taylor S/S 2013

Welcome Home

I used to cry every time I left home to go back to school. My eyes would slowly fill with tears that I tried to blink away as I pulled away from my house and then again when my dad would leave me in the security line at National Airport. Even though I loved Chicago and school and my friends the tears would always come, remnants of the child who once told her mother she would never leave home.

When I left for New York, now more than four months ago, I cried as well. A six-week stay at home had once again filled my heart with the love that surrounds me when I am there. I cried because I was leaving home for good, because I was terrified of what life in the city would hold for me, because it was the first time in my life where I was going off without a real plan.

Yesterday I left home again, after spending the long weekend thoroughly ensconced in home life. I like to say that each time I go home I revert to my teenage self - lying around the house, going to the mall, carrying a Vera Bradley bag on my arm. I spent time with my parents and my best friend who I've known since I was five and high school friends and I listened to the near silence of suburban nights and walked out onto the back deck in my bare feet. I got bitten by mosquitoes and ate way too much and relived old rituals with a cup of coffee and a copy of the Washington Post. And I wished the weekend were longer so that I could stay and give my parents longer hugs and sit around the dinner table for hours. I was sad to leave.

But I didn't cry. Instead of thinking of the things I was leaving, I was thinking about what I would be coming back to: the city that I love, friends I want to see, friends who want to see me, a job that I'm never sorry to wake up for (except maybe that one time when I was hungover on a Wednesday morning), a boy I have a crush on, the beginning of fashion week, my bed that is, admittedly, the one superior thing about my apartment as opposed to my house... Even though I was leaving home and my parents and that wonderful cocoon, I'm actually making a life here in New York and when I got back to my apartment, well, it felt just like home.