Going to your first New York Fashion Week show is nothing less than all your dreams come true. The streets surrounding Skylight Clarkson Square building buzzed with models, fashion editors, photographers and drag queens giving out free cotton candy. As I squeezed past the crowds looking for the correct gallery, I snapped pictures of street style inspo and tried not to look too star-struck. Once I found the correct gallery I pushed past paparazzi and suddenly froze: Paris and Nicole Hilton exited the Alice + Olivia show and walked right into the bright light of camera flashes – maybe 4 feet away from me. I spent my tween years obsessing over Paris, Britney and Lindsay, so seeing one of my former idols in real life was incredible. After standing around the waiting room so packed with people I might have turned into a sardine, we finally all took our seats.
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With heavy rock music as our soundtrack, the white and floral backdrop of the show lit up and the lights around us dimmed – my anticipation was boiling over. The audience members fit into two main categories: Somebody in Fashion or Someone Obsessed with Torrid. The “somebodies in fashion” wore sleek slacks and plain blouses with giant sunglasses – basically exactly what you think a fashion editor looks like. All us normals wore a lot of floral, tulle, leather accents and jackets, and the most outrageous and eye-catching accessories you have ever seen – clearly Torrid had an influence on us. The show began with a long, semi-sheer, glittery lace dress paired with a hand-painted graffiti moto leather jacket – the room gaped, it was beautiful.
It was what you expected of Torrid: fabulous real-sized women floating up and down the runway in clothes you could wear on a date, to class, or while fawning around your apartment. Lots of leather moto jackets, flowing floor length dresses, and spots of floral (from embellishments to textile) busied the show. Kimono cover-ups and distressed jeans were matched with almost every look – oh and corsets. There’s something to be said about such a famous plus-sized brand involving so many corsets, a garment literally designed to disguise fatness, but we’ll skip that for now.
There was a brief pause, and the backdrop changed to announce the Torrid Model Search models were to come next and the room absolutely exploded. “YAS THAT’S ME QUEEN,” a fan shouted behind me as the first Torrid Model Search model went down the runway – in one of the sexiest outfits of the show. The ten finalists finished out the show wonderfully and then circled back with the other models for the final walk. Thunderous applause, whoops and “YAS QUEENS” filled the room.
All in all, the show was a great sampling of what to expect next spring: leather, floral, fierce. By the time everyone took pictures with the famous Miss Jay and fangirled over the models the room emptied quickly for the next show – fashion, like New York, never sleeps.
Top photo via Torrid; photos and videos via Bri Kane
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