I like to think my penchant for bending the rules is genetic. The great story of my youth was my grandfather, well into his 70s, breaking off from his three sons at the 1987 NFL Championship game, only to re-emerge several moments later making a beeline across the field to New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms, shaking the future Super Bowl MVP’s hand, and wishing him good luck in the game. That sense of can’t-stop-me determination was passed down to my father and, now, to me. It’s led me into a fair share of places I most certainly shouldn’t be, but by far the most exciting was New York Fashion Week.
It was my senior year of high school and I was playing out some type of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off scenario with my best friend. We had cut class and made our way to Bryant Park, where the shows were held at the time, with the intention of standing outside and gawking at all the models, editors, and celebrities going in and out of the venue. After several hours of people-watching, we started to hear clamoring about the Anna Sui show starting in 30 minutes. The voice in my head that I try to keep silent perked up and said, “Why not sneak in?” I looked at my partner in crime and we made the plan to find a way inside.
Working to our advantage was the fact that the tents in Bryant Park were watched by guards mostly around the main front and back entrances, leaving the backstage doors at the sides of the venue unwatched. We darted inside, and attempted to play it cool while winding our way into the show. Eventually, we made it past the guards. Moments later, the lights dimmed, and out stomped Agyness, Lara, Lily, and Karen, all glittering in Anna Sui’s Lurex-woven creations. Panda Bear and the Beatles played on the sound system, and even though I had spent my whole existence up to that point certain that I was meant to work in fashion, it was cemented for me in that moment.
“I love that! I love that you were so determined to come see the show, and, probably, I would have been the same way,” Sui told me over the phone. (In our first meeting, I couldn’t help blabbing to her that I crashed her show, then proudly declared it to the entire KCD PR team around her, who luckily laughed it off.) “I just like that people want to come to the show,” she continued. Her tip for future crashers looking to follow in my footsteps: “Go for it! Why not? I have no idea what the security is going to be like at the post office [where her show is this season]. I imagine it’s going to be harder to crash because there’s only one entrance area.”
Find tips from seven other fashion show crashers below.
Luke Leitch, Contributor, Vogue.com
“Although it doesn’t quite count as crashing—okay, it kind of does—I’ve weaseled my way into lots of shows that I wasn’t on the list for, thanks to the encouragement of my former colleague, Daily Telegraph fashion director Lisa Armstrong. Her technique for getting me in was ingenious, simple, and 100 percent effective: She would stride magisterially up to the door person, with me hovering close behind, flash her invitation, and then stop momentarily at the mouth of the exit point to look in whatever designer handbag she was toting that week. This is, of course, the most irritating behavior for any door person, rather akin to the habit of Italian tourists to hover en masse at the bottom point of elevators on the London Underground system. As she paused—momentarily immune to the tide of humanity—she would slip the invitation behind her back into my waiting hand. Then I would distractedly flash the same invitation for a second time. Of course, getting inside the show is half the battle. If you want to sit rather than stand, you have to evade the PRs who tend to have ultra-strategized, politically sensitive seating plans on their iPads. Never go straight to the front row unless you are a complete nightmare or delusional. Look for a friend in B, C, or beyond. Or just get over yourself and stand—the view is often better when you’re upright.”
Marc Sebastian Faiella, Model
“When I was fifteen my mom let me skip high school to try to sneak into Fashion Week. I was young and naive, and after a day I landed in the tents. Once there, I spent the entire day inside, and I got into so many shows. They were always the best and had tons of goodie bags, which is what I bribed my mom with to keep letting me skip school that week. Now as a model, I go to a lot of the shows my friends walk in, and I sneak them into anything I walk. I’ve taken my mom to Fashion Week before and brought her backstage at the Siki Im show. It’s a lot easier having worked with a lot of the people now arming the gates. However, one time my life as a crasher clashed with my life as a model. I walked the Marc by Marc Jacobs show my first season, and I checked in with a woman who remembered me from when I tried to crash a show a couple years back. I was desperate to get in, and I remember she pulled me by the arm out of this show. After her general shock of me now checking in as a model, we laughed about it.”
Nicole Phelps, Director, Vogue Runway
“My first Marc Jacobs show was the collection he played the Verve’s ‘Bittersweet Symphony.’ I was working at WWD at the time, much too junior to score a ticket—someone must have given it to me. It was the height of Kate and Shalom and Carolyn Murphy and all of those girls, and it was glorious. My second Marc show, I crashed. I was at Elle and still pretty naive. I used another Elle editor’s name—she was out of town. I didn’t have any idea that the PR people at check-in might know who she was and, by default, know that I wasn’t her. But I guess they were as green as me. Then, as now, Marc was the biggest designer in New York City and the symbol of all that was cool to me at the time. Until the moment the show started, I was panicked I’d get kicked out. I haven’t missed a Marc show since.”
Maria Cornejo, Designer
“The only time I really crashed a show was when I was a student at fashion school in London. At that time in the eighties, shows were so much less corporate than they are now. I also dressed like a fashion student and I think it was easy for me to mix in with the fashion crowd. I remember it being exhilarating to see something that seemed to be so out of reach. You get swept away in the excitement of it all. Now everyone has access with live-streams, social media, et cetera, that there’s really no need to feel like you need to crash a show! It’s wonderful that this generation can see and be inspired by fashion even if they don’t work in the industry. Personally, I put a ban on all social media before the clothing goes down the runway because I want to keep something an element of surprise. It’s important to keep things new in this age of constant information.”
Mackenzie Wagoner, Beauty Editor, Vogue.com
“If we’re not counting the Limited Too fashion shows my sister and I walked in at our local mall, I went to my first real Fashion Week event when I was a teenager. My friend had been gifted fashion show tickets by an editor working for a Chicago newspaper whom she met in passing. And, in a kind of pay-it-forward gesture, she shared them with me and some other friends. I was not the skipping-school type, so I could only go to one: Geoffrey Beene—among the first presentations after his death in 2004. In anticipation, I read all about the great American sportswear designer and his lasting influence. I lost sleep over my outfit and borrowed a much-too-large pair of shoes from my fashionable neighbor. To my horror, when I arrived at the show, ready to take my seat amid the pumping music and editors I would one day call colleagues, I discovered that it was a dead-quiet showroom. What’s worse, the handful of people in the space all seemed to know each other. Pinnacle mortification was reached when a member of the Beene team approached me to talk about the collection and ask if I had any questions. I couldn’t even remember which paper I was supposed to be representing. I think I managed to blurt out something about a wool coat reminding me ‘of my mother’ before all but crawling on my hands and knees to escape the room.”
Nick Remsen, Fashion Writer, Vogue
“A weirdly specific memory, but I snuck into Phillip Lim’s Fall 2010 collection (one of the last shows at Bryant Park), and there was this song on the soundtrack that I was super into but couldn’t immediately identify. (This was either pre-Shazam, or I just didn’t have it.) A few months later, I was driving with a friend and the song was randomly on a playlist he’d downloaded. It’s called ‘Poison Lips’ by Vitalic. It’s very good. Also, because of that show, I missed my flight back to Miami, where I was living for college, but it was worth it, I think?”
Anna Sui, Designer
“Actually, I haven’t crashed a fashion show. I was just trying to figure out some of the early fashion shows that I went to—I don’t know how I got in, but I had an invitation. I just wrote to Steven Meisel to ask him about one of the shows we went to, but maybe he doesn’t remember, either. Maybe we knew somebody who knew somebody. I was always such a keen fashion fan that if there was something that sounded really, really interesting, [I would try to be there]. I remember Kansai Yamamoto had a show, and I think the way I got to see that was I knew Kezia [Keeble] and Paul [Cavaco] from KCD and maybe they produced it. If you talk about seeing rock groups—that I’ve crashed! I remember I went to see the New York Dolls. Back then, because there was no Internet, no cell phones, it was just word of mouth, and somebody said, ‘Just tell them that so-and-so invited you.’ So when I went to the door, I said, ‘So-and-so invited me,’ and she said, ‘I’m so-and-so and I don’t know who you are.’ So that was the last time I tried that. Ultimately, she let me in, because I think she thought I was so nervy to do that. That was a kind of punk rock moment.”
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