Fashion Week Nights

The thing about Fashion Week parties is that everyone’s hollowed out by evening. All day you’re moving between shows and meetings, holding your stomach in, shaking hands with people who don’t remember you, and by eight o’clock all you want is to move and sweat and stop being examined. The Hamburger Hof was where the crowd had congregated—the models from the circuit, the photographers, the designers still making the rounds, the people who’d somehow got the link and weren’t about to waste it. Eva Padberg was there. Bonnie Strange. Brooke Candy. You see the same faces all week under different light and they’re just people dancing.

Joe Goddard and MØ were playing—good enough to move to, not so good that you stopped thinking about other things. That floating quality where the music provides cover for the fact that no one’s really here for the music. Everyone was still performing in some register, that’s the thing about Fashion Week, but at least you could do it while sweating.

Fanni said something late in the night that landed—that she loved Fashion Week officially, loved all its parties, though she wasn’t sure why. I knew exactly what she meant. It’s not about the venue or the music or standing around with people you barely know. It’s just the week itself, the collective agreement to stay up late and pretend something matters. It doesn’t, but you go anyway.