Sunday, February 14 This is going to be a breeze. For the first time, New York is at the start of the international catwalk season. This is not going to be one of those usual hard-core, 10-shows-a-day monster routines that is par for the course in Europe. Most American designers seem to be completely disinterested in anything that happens outside Manhattan ('Hong Kong?' asked one bewildered fashion PR when I rang to chase a missing show invitation. 'Is that that new place in China or Japan, or wherever?'), so I resolve to go to only a handful of shows and not get sucked into the usual fashion neurosis.
6 pm: Cynthia Rowley is showing in a big hall at Grand Central Station. One of the main entrances has been shut and commuters are cursing at having to use another entrance. By 5.30 pm, at least 100 people are waiting outside, blocking the pavement. The temperature has plunged to freezing point. We are finally let in and I am told to get a seat assignment from a desk in the corner. At fashion shows in Europe, your seat is noted on your invitation. Here, once you receive an invitation, you need to call a special RSVP number, your name is put on a long list at the door, and they give you a seat number when you arrive. It is a ridiculously long-winded process but I remind myself that, apart from being neurotic, New York fashion people are inveterate control freaks.
The woman takes my name and asks me if I called to RSVP. 'Er, no, I've literally just flown in,' I say. 'Sorry,' she says, 'standing only. You should have called.' As I had an extra ticket, I had taken a non-fashion friend who was now bemoaning my plebeian status. 'I thought this was all glamorous,' she said. 'I thought they whisked you to your seat, gave you a drink. Isn't there any food?' We find a place to stand and watch the fuss on the other side of the catwalk over actress Natasha Richardson, seated in front row in a beautiful pale blue silk pantsuit. She looks great - shame about the career. Comedienne Tracey Ullmann appears seconds before the show starts, and some poor woman is booted out of her seat.
The show begins, but my non-fashion friend is perplexed, uttering things like 'Ugh, who would wear that?' and 'That model is pretty ugly' and 'Gosh, you can see her boobs'. Some people just don't get it, do they? Monday, February 15 1 pm: I am running down Broadway looking for a stationery shop. I am about to interview handbag designer Amy Chan, and, professional and experienced journalist that I am, left home without a notebook or pen. I am 20 minutes late and can't find a store that sells notepads, although there are cyber cafes at every corner. I stumble into Chan's soon-to-be-opened store at 1.30 pm, and we go round the corner to a grungily hip place called Cafe Gitane, where we share a beetroot salad and talk fashion. She is enormously likeable and insists I come back tonight for the party to celebrate the opening of her store.
Home to write. I fall asleep.
At 6 pm, I get up and head to Bryant Park, where many of the shows are being held, for the BCBG event. There are little gift boxes of Bumble & Bumble haircare products on each chair: the box on the chair next to me has been swiped, and the person who sits there tries to steal one from another chair before having her knuckles rapped by an usher. She takes one anyway. The show is great: gorgeous, user-friendly clothes that people can afford.