Do not even try to shove her. She will high-heel you.
new york fugging city
The Fug Girls: At Hervé Léger, Alexa Ray Joel Did Not Lose Her Fashion Week Zen
Usually the front row at Hervé Léger is fully stocked with starlets, so we were surprised to arrive at the show on Tuesday afternoon to find that the reserved seats were mostly for models: the blond-banged Karolina Kurkova, the bun-sporting Elsa Pataky, and chartreuse-clad Heather Marks, thus combining to form perhaps the tallest front row of the season, as well as the one most devoid of actors who are in the employ of the CW — or anyone. But the most interesting guest to us was not a model but rather the daughter of one: Alexa Ray Joel, who wandered in through the front door just like the rest of us, and — also like the rest of us — seemed sort of bemused by the experience of being squeezed through the press mob like toothpaste through a tube.
"I was like a chicken with my head cut off walking in at first; it was sort of petrifying," Alexa confessed. "But I'm getting used to it now — it's very typical of the New York energy. Everyone's all hyped up and ambitious." Or all strung out on Starbucks to compensate for not having slept since Thursday — one or the other.
Alexa was wearing a tight spangly mini that, if not Hervé, was certainly Hervé-adjacent, and a rag & bone blazer over a very low-cut vintage blouse that put her impressive cleavage on major display. One journalist was kind of (creepily) obsessed with it, yelling out directions at Alexa to work her boobs as photographers snapped her picture. "That's right, posture! Posture!" Alexa grinned as she straightened her spine. She seemed like she'd been doing all this forever, which, we wondered, maybe she had been — after all, she was raised by Christie Brinkley. "No, this is my first Fashion Week — I was devirginized at Jill Stuart!" Alexa said. "I'm learning that you'd better look where you're going and dodge people, because they will slam right into you. And I'm petite, so I get knocked around! But I've got my high heels. They're my weapons."
Joel said that although she's a homebody when she's not out performing, she has experienced a friendly uptick in fan attention after her frank admission a year ago of emotional struggles. "Initially, you feel like, 'Oh, God, I can't believe I did that.' It was so vulnerable having that stuff out there," she said. "And a lot of it was exaggerated. I wasn't exactly suicidal. But I did struggle with depression, and I think it's important to talk about that, and people were really positive." She did promise that she's happier now. "I'm dating someone," she said coyly. "It's exciting! He cooked for me on Valentine's Day! How fantastic is that?" Sounds good to us — we spent the evening curled up with our laptops and egg-salad sandwiches. Does he do takeout?
