Fashion Lessons From Fashion Week
Don’t be a pushy reality star. Don’t carry an Uzi. Don’t do $500,000 worth of coke.
Fashion Week comes around twice a year to teach New Yorkers all sorts of lessons that can’t be bought retail: (1) Reality-TV stars need to learn patience. At Kimora Lee Simmons ’s overbooked Baby Phat after-party at Home, the security guard was left shouting, “Go home!” to a group on the curb that included Tyson Beckford , Foxy Brown , Vibe editor-in-chief Mimi Valdés , and J. Alexander (the runway coach on America’s Next Top Model). But Alexander wasn’t having it. “Kimora wants me in there,” he said, according to a witness. “I will not be turned away.” “He was having a diva fit,” said the witness. “It’s funny—on the show he’s always saying, ‘You betta walk,’ but I don’t think he’s used to being told to walk.” But after his attempts at entry failed, that’s exactly what he did. (2) Department of Homeland Security rules do not apply to Tara Subkoff : On the morning of the Imitation of Christ show at the Surrogate’s Court Building, designer Subkoff’s brother, Daniel , was stopped by security for attempting to bring an Uzi inside the building. To Daniel’s confusion, the Uzi, a runway prop, was confiscated. When an employee of IOC’s publicity firm went down to retrieve the gun, “it turned out it was actually a real, 30-pound Uzi” (albeit with a plugged-up barrel). The employee got the gun back—by convincing security that it was a conceptual flight of fancy and not a public-safety threat—but then the Subkoffs forgot to use it in the show. (3) If you have a rather uninspiring collection, at least get the models excited by having a multiplatinum artist as your “pump-up guy” to spur them on right before they walk the runway. Tommy Hilfiger had Jay-Z , who shouted, “Make me some magic, Baby Boy,” in the faces of the wan mannequins. (4) And, finally, don’t use blow. At Elle magazine’s 21st-anniversary party, the rapper DMC of Run-DMC reminisced about when he was a baby boy of 21 himself. If he could do it all over, “I probably wouldn’t sniff cocaine. Really. I sniffed a lot. When I look back, I say, ‘Damn, it’s unbelievable!’ I even tried to add up the amount. I spent almost $500,000 on cocaine from, like, ’86 to ’88. Damn! I mean, now I’m thinking about it again.”
—Emma Rosenblum and Melena Ryzik

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• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Table of Contents: September 26, 2005 issue of New York | Subscribe!