Fashion’s Night (wish I stayed in) Out

by Becca Blasdel

Fashion’s Night Out turned 3 this year, and it seems that everyone in the tri-state area was now familiar with the citywide event.  I could hear screaming and applause from my apartment on Thompson street. as I was still getting dressed.  As I turned the corner on to Prince Street, I was bombarded by a sea of letterman’s jackets and colorful baseball caps flooding out of the Billionaire Boy’s Club store, where Pharrell Williams had just made an appearance.

Prince and Spring streets were treated as one giant sidewalk, with easily 500 people crowding in and out of stores.  There was a pretty common formula to all of the events in SoHo, twenty percent off merchandise and a DJ blasting tunes that related to fashion—in Intermix there was a song about going out in your Haltson dress.  It seemed that an overwhelming stench of the hundreds of people who had shopped before me loomed in every store I visited.  The Michael Kors boutique tried to disguise it by spraying his signature perfume, which always reminded me of my mother, until last night where all I can recall is perfectly manicured hands viciously grabbing for wallets and fur vests in a panicked frenzy.

As I walked turned on Broadway, hopelessly trying to make it to Topshop all the way down on Broome, a New York City tour bus drove by as everyone on it screamed to the crowds of people below.  By 10:30 most stores were pushing shoppers out, and the streets were so packed it was hard to walk in flat boots, let alone the 6 inch stilettos many women saw necessary for the evening. The police barricades and toe crushing hardly seemed worth the free glass of champagne and a chance at winning a fifty dollar gift card, but the spectacle of die hard fashion fans pushing their way into Miu Miu more than made up for it.