“We did a cover story on you—did you ever get to read that?” The Observer asked flamboyant blogger sensation, America’s Next Top Model judge and jet-setting front-row fixture, BryanBoy (Bryan Grey-Yambao), before taking our seats at Yigal Azrouël’s spring 2013 fashion show on Friday, September 7.
“No, no!” Mr. Grey-Yambao replied uneasily, shifting from side to side in a colorful plaid Marni top. Read More
Yesterday, the New York Observer was spending the day hanging out in a high school in Newburgh, New York, as we are sometimes wont to do. Actually, we were watching People’s Revolution maven Kelly Cutrone give ten high school seniors their dream gowns and accessories in a collaboration with Nine West called “Prom Crashers.”
In between takes (for this was to be a web series special, and you know what they say: there’s no such thing as a free prom, because tickets are $65 and due in homeroom by next Monday), Ms. Cutrone spilled some gossip about the upcoming cycle of America’s Next Top Model. Read More
As sartorialists make their biannual pilgrimage from New York to London to Milan to Paris, some veteran tent-dwellers still have a pebble stuck in their Louboutins from Lincoln Center.
The glossy editor’s anxiety over being edged out of the front row, it seems, has migrated over to the media riser and down to the pit. What was once the province of professional photogs, to hear them tell it, has been overrun by iPhone and iPad wielding bloggers who wouldn’t know a bounce flash from a zoom lens. And they’re hogging up the press passes for backstage beauty shots!
Shortly after they turned off the stage lights and sopped up the champagne, a handful of disgruntled photographers reached out to The Observer to kvetch. Slights ranged from being turned away from shows, to an errant iPhone interrupting their runway image, to discovering that the insolent photo-bloggers never learned the etiquette about getting your shot and moving on. Read More
First Daughter of Mustique Elizabeth Hilfiger shouted “Is BryanBoy here?” The elusive Philippine blogger may not be, a P.R. type informed her. “BRYANBOY,” she groaned, exhibiting a classic vocal fry. Nearby, Bradley Cooper discussed football with New York Giant Victor Cruz–”I’m an Eagles man myself,” said the Limitless star–between posing for snaps with Read More
“Who are all these people?” We whispered to the woman sitting next to me as we scanned the front row in the giant Eyebeam studio on the West Side Highway. We were waiting for the Doo.Ri show to begin.
“They’re bloggers, mostly,” whispered our seatmate, Kristin Booker, who was herself a blogger for Fashion Style Beauty. She pointed out that most of the editors of the fashion magazines were placed far away from each other in different sections of the front, “to promote competition.”
Meanwhile, photographers snapped pictures of smiling young people with blue hair who we didn’t recognize, or teenage women who looked like they hadn’t showered in a week. These were the new Fashion Week celebrities. Read More
“Here’s all you need to know about Fashion Week,” a boutique designer from New Jersey was telling the New York Observer in the private American Express VIP SkyBox. “None of these sizes were made for you.”
Karlanne, the owner of Fresh by Karlanne was wearing a beaded dress, feathered hair–”Is it poofing up??” she kept asking her girlfriend–and brown suede boots. She had the look of an old-time pro, and since the AmEx box–a partitioned off room above the theaters in Lincoln Center that serves as a subdued meeting area to provide American Express Cardmembers with exclusive access to fashion week experiences– we felt we should take all the advice we could get. Even if it wasn’t pretty. Read More
In February 2009, a young-looking man appeared in the audience of the Marc Jacobs Fall-Winter show, one of the most exclusive at New York Fashion Week. He was not a director, like Marc’s friend and frequent guest Sofia Coppola, or a famous singer, like Madonna, or an actor, but his handsome, androgynous face was already familiar to tens of thousands of fans online. And there he was, in the pantheon. Fashion-show invite lists are feudal and loaded with meaning, and that man’s arrival at Marc Jacobs meant: I am now Anna Wintour’s peer.
An unlikely peer he was. Read More
