I always make an effort to talk to the security wherever I go. It makes them feel a bit guilty if they’re throwing you out later.
“How’s it going, bro?” I ask a man the size of a small house. He gives me a big smile and swallows my hand inside of his.
“Oh choice, bro, you know.”
“Had to throw out many drunks?” I ask him. It seems like an appropriate question, given the gaggle of shrieking emanating from the Stoli Tent behind him.
“Only one or two. My job is to make people happy, not sad.”
One or two is quite a restrained figure, I contemplate as I move towards the bathrooms to divest my bladder of the repulsively over sweetened Stoli RTD it has been forced to endure as the Stoli tent will only sell wine and beer at certain hours. They attempt to make up for this vicious imposition by offering their own free drinks. It is not a fair trade, as the shit is almost undrinkable, unless you’re thirteen, or have lost your taste buds in a freak scalding accident that happened inside your mouth, or both. After two of them I’m sure I can feel the onset of diabetes.
Finishing up in the bathroom a man rather alarmingly attempts to shake my hand. I point out this isn’t the best idea, as I am yet to wash them. He claims not to care, but I tell him, I don’t think so. “You’ll be on the end of it, you know.”
“Oh I DO hope so,” he shrieks. It wouldn’t be fashion week without the mandatory unwelcome gay advance.
Having managed to avoid being molested in the cubicles, I make my way back outside and introduce myself to a group sitting and smoking on the couches. They are a collection of stylists, which is fascinating to me, as I’m hopeful they will provide me with enormous insight into the shows I’ve seen so far and can’t understand, which is essentially all of them.
Stylists are strange creatures, really. They get paid to shop and dress and be fabulous, and no self respecting celebrity can ever be without one. Colin Mathura Jeffree probably has three. They know what’s in and what’s out better and quicker than a cat at the front door. I like them immensely. For one thing, they have great style, and I’m hoping that by sitting with them and nodding sagaciously as they talk this will somehow transfer to me. Also they are highly amusing to listen to.
“The lack of attention to detail is just sheer laziness,” one of them says about a show she has seen. The way she says it, it sounds like she is pronouncing a sentence of death. When the other stylists all agree with her I know that it is – there will be no sales for any of their celebrities clothes horses this year, darling.
“It has been an EMBARRASSMENT,” another one says. “Some reporter from China wrote the media here are better dressed than at Fashion Week in Beijing. I think maybe she was blind.” I carefully tuck my media pass under my jacket while their attention is diverted.
“I was put in the B row,” another one says, and this brings a pall of silence to the whole group. They all look at me as though this hugely insulting catastrophe was somehow my fault.
“I just stand in the corners,” I offer helpfully. “If I get seated at all it’s usually a mistake.” This appears to mollify them.
One of them is stuffing his multiple small gift bags into the largest gift bag. I wonder what I’m missing out on. “There’s nothing worth having,” a beautiful girl resplendent in polka dots says, reading my mind. “Unless you need deodorant or lipstick.” I hope I don’t need either, but there’s no way to be sure without asking.
On my way out, the security man casually informs me that my fly is undone. “Styling, bro,” he laughs at my consternation. “Totally styling!”
