Backstage Beauty: New York Fashion Week, Spring/Summer 2017

Some of my favorite shots from behind the scenes at this past NYFW.

 

And this picture, which I really only love as
documentation of how fabulous this person is. Amen.

NYFW Fall/Winter 2015: Backstage Beauty

The insanity of New York Fashion Week has subsided and in its wake, as usual, I am left with a barrage of images from the week. Here are some of my favorites from backstage and beyond.

If you'd like to check out some of my dispatches from the week, you can check them out on Her Campus.com here and here, and on The Jewish Daily Forward here.

Symbiosis: Coexisting Backstage

It occurs to me that I've never actually written about what being backstage before a fashion show is like. Each person's experience is different, of course, but here's what mine is like.

Perhaps the one cardinal rule to remember about every show during Fashion Week is that no show starts on time. If a show is marked to start at 1pm, it will actually start around 1:30, sometimes later if the designer is especially fabulous (or just...running really late). Personally, I've never waited more than 45 minutes.

That being said, call times backstage (when I arrive) at a show are usually two to three hours before its slated start time. Yesterday, for example, showtime was 2:30pm, and backstage call time was 11:30am. And even before I get there, people are already swarming. A desk is set up with two young gals in black, probably interns, checking people in. If it's at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week tents at Lincoln Center, I'll get a backstage pass tag in a color and or pattern for that designer (each designer has a different color so they can't be duplicated and used for another day by sneaky folks). If it's off site, as many shows are these days, in event spaces or galleries, I'll be given a bracelet or simply be allowed to roam free with my camera. I'm usually there to photograph backstage beauty for Her Campus.com, which, as I've written before, is the magazine for which I am the style editor (follow my NYFW exploits here if you like!). The PR companies who have brought me there represent the brands being used on hair, nails, skin, and/or makeup. I try to wear all black so I blend in and people ignore me because I find I get better pictures that way.

When I arrive, I immediately find a place to plonk down my massive black leather bag, which I have unofficially dubbed my Fashion Week bag. In it, I have any and all sorts of things I might need for the day: memory cards for my camera, phone charger, a Luna bar for when I get hungry, and sometimes my laptop if I have lag time between shows, or even a pair of heels. But usually not because during Fashion Week I tend to dress like a grunge/punk version of an Olsen twin (post- Full House, pre- The Row), with a black cashmere beanie, a long black cardigan, and lots of black eye eyeliner.

I take out my camera and my phone and I begin shooting. The clothes I like to wear during Fashion Week don't usually have pockets, so I end up shoving my phone in my shirt so I can snap pictures for Twitter pretty easily (#nyfw). I'm ducking in between models having their makeup done, wedging myself in between the stools or chairs on which they sit so I can get some interesting shots. I inevitably bump into a makeup artist and say sorry--I always feel bad for doing this because I'm very much invading the space they need to do their work. But we all need to coexist, I guess, because my work allows their work to be seen, so...symbiosis? Sometimes I'll see another photographer I know and we'll hug and make chit-chat briefly. Then, more shooting. I'll also have introductions to the hair stylists and makeup artists at the show, and I listen to them talk about their inspiration, how they took the feel of the designer's collection and made it into a ponytail or a swoop of eyeliner (this is my favorite part, because I love seeing how people's minds work in their own creative niche).

I watch hair get teased, weaves added to too-thin manes, hair sprayed and sprayed again with thickeners and conditioners and oils and gels. Nails get polished and unpolished, on the toes and the fingers, cheeks are rouged and lips darkened and eyes glittered, all from scratch, or sometimes not from scratch when a model has come directly from another show. Sometimes they're late and everyone has a heart attack.

All the while, more interns stuff goody bags and place clothing lists on each guest's seat. Models will take the tiniest plate of food available and fill it with grapes. I will snitch a half a bagel someone's torn off or a zucchini stick and the PR girls who brought me there will sneer at me. Sometimes there is boxed water or Vita Coco, but at Lincoln Center there's infinite Diet Coke because the brand is a sponsor.

Hair and makeup takes forevahhh because there are like 20 models and like 5 people to do their hair, 5 people to do their makeup so the girls will often have to do a model rehearsal while they have one eyebrow painted on or they're still wearing the foam flip flops from having their toes laquered. They line up backstage and go walk the runway as if it were showtime, then they go back to getting their hair and makeup finished. While the girls do rehearsal the hair and makeup staff freak out--
"I haven't even straightened her hair yet!"--but they always finish in time. All the while, I am taking pictures, trying to challenge myself to see something I haven't seen before.

Once hair and makeup are finished, it's time to get dressed! Dressers help the girls into "First Looks," the first outfits they will wear on their first trip down the runway. They steam the clothes, lint-roll them, and put sticky tape where there needs to be sticky tape. If they have an outfit change in the show, the dresser will help change them quickly without damaging the clothes. At that point, I go into the audience and wait for the show to begin--I don't like to take pictures backstage at this time because I feel it's a violation of models' privacy. I mean, they signed up to be photographed, but not while they're naked, you know? At least not today, anyway. So I go and sit and everyone's noisy and running around backstage while people are filing in to sit in the front of the house. Extra special people are photographed with bright white flashbulbs from their seats in the front rows. And then the lights dim and the show begins. I watch. And 15-30 minutes later, it's over. Until next season, anyway.

Runways and Walkways

It has only been two days, and good lord Fashion Week has already worked its magic. I can hardly remember what day it is, my camera is exploding with pictures, my feet are blistered, I've been eating ice cream for dinner, and am constantly on the verge of passing out. And, strangely, I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm sure I've written it before, but if 10 years ago you had told me this is what my life would be, I would have cried tears of happiness. Running around taking pictures backstage and writing about fashion? I would have been sublimely happy. I am sublimely happy. Of course, the happiness doesn't come without work, but the work makes the happiness even sweeter. 

Two and a half years ago I stepped into the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week tents and nearly cried. I was here! I had made it! I don't feel exactly the same now, though elements of the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed me still remain. My Fashion Week ensembles are more, shall we say, laissez-faire chic, less planned than in the past. I care less what people think and more about being able to walk comfortably in my shoes. Before many shows I am running around photographing backstage, too, so I *gasp* need flats so I don't die. After two days, I am tipsy with tiredness. God bless these people who do multiple shows  and parties and shows and parties every single day; even at my small number I am starting to feel it, and tomorrow I have back to back shows and events pretty much until 2am. Trust me, I am not complaining, though. This is the work all of us have chosen, the thrill of seeing new clothes for the first time, the rush of makeup artists and hairstylists backstage, the tip-toed walks of the models as they sashay or plod down the runway during rehearsal and rush into their clothes for 'First Looks' (the outfit the model wears on their first trip down the runway during a show). Just sometimes it makes you need a nap or three in between shows (if you have the luxury of 'in between shows,' that is). As I've said many times before, if Fashion Week were every day of my life, I'd have to hurt myself. It's not a way to live. But two weeks out of the year? Sign me up! One of the things I love about being tired, about being "Fashion Week tired," is that it's such a clear sign that you're living!

This Fashion Week, I will be backstage quite often and also in the audience quite a bit. It's a challenge to see something new each time, especially backstage where it's so often the same kinds of things happening--some hairspray there, some eyeshadow here. What I have noticed myself seeing more and more this time around are the people on their way to events--today I was on the train with a model who happened to be going to the same show I was photographing backstage. Long, stringy brown hair parted in the middle, black velvet harem pants and thick black flatform sneakers, a black leather backpack hanging from her back. She brushes past me and says "Excuse me" in a thick Eastern European accent, hair swishing behind her. Her portfolio is in her hand and she clomps up the subway steps in these giant shoes. Sometimes you'll see a fashion celebrity--read: people non-fashion-nerds don't recognize-- on their way to and from a show (Nina Garcia walked past me at BCBG yesterday, as did Kate Lanphear and Carine Roitfeld. I gasped inwardly and wistfully, in that way we all do when we see someone we want to talk to but have just instantly run out of all the words we've ever known). In some ways, the walkways outside of venues are great equalizers--we all have to tread on the same ground. Unless of course you've been ushered in the back way, which is another story entirely. 

In the fast-paced, digital age in which we live, though, Fashion Week's place in, well, fashion, is being challenged. It is hardly as exclusive as it used to be (many designers this year, even, are live-streaming their shows) and barely serves its original purpose of exposing designers to editors and buyers in one place (the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week tents). Many designers actually choose to have shows offsite, in art galleries or photo studios or even high school gymnasiums, to have smaller shows and preserve the original intent. A recent article in The New York Times addresses this very idea. Because if you are not writing about or choosing to sell the clothing, what are you really doing at a show? People have become obsessed with the exclusivity to the point where the clothes sometimes come second. 

Every Fashion Week, I am befuddled at my own reactions to the event: a sort of "include-me-don't-include-me" deal where I am both inside and outside of the world at all times. I said recently that I try to look at fashion like an art form, to review and critique the way one would a gallery exhibition. In this way, I hope, I just get to observe beauty and not get sucked into some sort of trend making machine. I think I have always wanted the beauty and not the machine; the substance and not the submission; the aesthetics and not the obsessions. We'll see how I do. I only have five days left and already I find myself wanting more. 

Who are all the tall, skinny people?

Fashion Week takes over parts of New York in a big way--for seven days, anyone remotely related to the business of fashion eschews all forms of their “regular” work and clomps back and forth in high heels or wingtips to show after show after show. I have the pleasure of being a part of this biannual event, though I am often photographing and hanging out backstage, so my clomping is often limited to my motorcycle boots which, at times, I like better.

For the layman, Fashion Week just sort of appears, but to those involved, we see it coming far in advance, be it in the emails we get from PR companies, the construction of the tents at Lincoln Center or, my new favorite way, seeing the models slinking about town in the middle of the day going to and from castings. Every time I see one I think to myself, ‘Ah yes, the rare beast steps forth from its natural habitat and emerges into the wild in search of food,’ though in this case when we say food we are of course referring to modeling gigs.

They are tall and slender, all of them; their faces are angular and of unusually precise symmetry. Females wear shorts and flats, carrying in their canvas tote bags the sky-high heels in which they will strut once they get to a casting. Faces absent of the makeup that will be caked upon them come Fashion Week, hair natural and free of the products that will be teased into them, their skinny jeans only slightly touch their protruding hipbones, their shorts reveal legs longer than I am tall. Men have sunken eyes, white t-shirts, and Ray-Bans; some wear Doc Martens or cowboy boots; their skin, like their female counterparts, is spotless. As irony would have it, they all do in fact look rather wild, untamed and unleashed into the daytime amongst the rest of New York’s creatures of all shapes and sizes.

I imagine the average New Yorker not employed in the fashion industry would not often have the occasion to see a lone model walking in the subway, mostly because these castings to or from which they are heading happen in the middle of the day. While bankers are office bound, safely tucked away in their suits, and PR girls wiggling about in their pencil skirts, the models stalk the land looking for their next opportunity to pounce upon. They are almost safer this way, free from the men who will grab their arms and try to buy them drinks, from street photographers snapping beams of lights in their faces as they take pictures. I don’t know if the average person would even know who they are or what they do, but might instead wonder, ‘Who is this tall, skinny person? I didn’t even know such creatures existed!’ or something perhaps less eloquent.

Backstage they are just human—they text, they listen to music, they (yes!) read books, they laugh with each other and they make annoyed faces when a hairstylist is somehow still fluffing their hair even though they’ve probably fluffed all there is to fluff and at this point are just being anal retentive. Girls sit passively while manicurists paint their nails in shades they might never normally consider wearing, brushes simultaneously thwapped against their faces making color appear where there was once none. And the men are sometimes even more beautiful than the women because they wear no makeup at all (most of the time, anyway, depending on what weird-ass designer decides to put blue eyeshadow on their male models).

The fashion industry gets a lot of flack for their use of these persons, their bones lacking less than the ‘normal’ amount of body fat of a person who might actually buy the clothes. Models aren’t “real” by whoever’s standards. And, to be fair, when I see models, part of me wants to sigh, ‘Ugh, not more of these people. Why don’t they just eat a fucking donut?’ but that part is outweighed by the sheer appreciation of seeing someone so unusual walking across (or under) the streets of New York. Hey, these people are people too, you know? They look pretty real to me.

Beauty Behind the Scenes

Hands-down, my favorite thing about Fashion Week is going behind the scenes at the shows and seeing them all get put together. One dresser lacing up a model's Doc Martens for the runway while the model reads War and Peace, another dresser lint-rolling a model while she stands texting backstage. A designer adjusting a model's belt so it hits just the right spot, a hairdresser making a hairstyle just messy enough. Then, the show goes on and the models strut their stuff, their hair falling perfectly (or purposely imperfectly) on their shoulders for a mere 15-30 minutes for a runway, much longer if it's a presentation.

Incidentally, while models are standing for presentations they, understandably, do some of the most mundane things, like scratch their hair or their noses that are just so much funnier because they're giant Barbie dolls doing it.

I have been fortunate enough to be able to capture these little moments, and wanted to share some of my favorites from the week.