CURB APPEAL Fashion Week Preview

Although I've been covering the shows for four seasons now, this is the first New York Fashion Week (NYFW) for which CURB APPEAL has received its own credentials. It's exhilarating, satisfying, and just a bit heady. Bearing the responsibility of reporting for your own media outlet carries a different, and perhaps even heavier, weight than representing someone else's. Especially since you're now master of your domain with regard to where and when you bop around town.

Structuring your fashion week schedule, I've learned, is an artform. You're given a plethora of opportunities for coverage, in addition to your standard runway fare at the tents: parties, store openings, breakfasts, dinners, press lounges, networking mixers, and the growingly popular collection presentations are just some of the varieties potential coverage comes in. Separating the wheat from the chaff, therefore, becomes a crucial skill to develop in order to maximize your time and reporting.

My first few seasons, like a true greenhorn, I'd reply to the opening of a box of Kleenex: any and every invitation was seized upon. Even though I can't claim it was strategic at the time, I now think that approach was invaluable, as the sheer exhaustion I experienced at the end of each week ultimately forced me to sit down and really think about which events I tended to garner the best coverage from, and which ones I was hitting up for just face time (or booze).

That period of being less than discriminating also produced some indelible war stories, including winding up at a beauty soirée in a seedy hotel room for a Brand That Shall Not Be Named that I'm convinced, due to the heavy petting and frequent trips to the bathroom going on, eventually turned into an orgy (a fellow writer and I hastily beat feet when figuratively, and almost literally, 30 seconds after meeting him, one of the guests invited us to stay [translation: swing] with him and his wife at their Paris apartment).

This season, I've dialed down the show coverage to just designers I'm truly interested in, and limited the "scene-y" events to ones that only have potential good times for both me and y'all. Just some of the corners I'm looking forward to haunting:

• Target's dinner honoring my fashion fairy godmother and friend Bevy Smith


• Mackage's first Ready-to-Wear collection (those of you who see me in the streets and always ask about my wool coats with the great structured collars: this is their designer)


• The debut of bebe-Kardashian (hush!)


• Robert Verdi's Fashion Week kick-off Twitter party, which I'll also be covering for Honey Magazine

• The W Hotels Arrivals Lounge in the tents at Bryant Park
  

I'll also be organizing coverage by day rather than topic so that there's just one run-down to read (and write) all in one cozy place. Unless of course a party I attend actually does turn into an orgy while I'm there. That, I think, is deserving of its own post.

It's also the last season the shows will be staged in Bryant Park, and I'm hoping that someone decides to take up my idea of a huge, end-of-week bash in the lobby area with ?uestlove on the turntables and Ibiza club-style bubbles falling from the ceiling.

Stick with the CURB throughout Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York, February 11 - 18, for our usual fun-loving coverage, and follow us in real-time on Twitter @realcurbappeal.

Image source: Attention PR