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The past month has been a whirlwind for luxury brands, models and fashion fans as designers have promoted their visions at Fashion Weeks in New York, London, Milan and now Paris. The hundreds of shows have been no less of a marathon for Vanessa Friedman, the chief fashion critic for The New York Times. (She says chocolate, comfortable shoes and her colleagues on The New York Times’s Styles desk help.)
It’s a marathon, sure, but a whole lot of fun too. “Going to a lot of fashion shows is like going to a lot of art galleries,” Ms. Friedman told Times Insider. “Much of what you see is dull, or derivative, or silly, but then you see one show that makes you think about identity in a whole new way, and it sends your thoughts skittering off in exciting directions and wipes everything else away.”
Ms. Friedman, who has covered fashion for The Times since 2014, especially as it intersects with politics and societal and cultural identity, will attend shows in Paris until Tuesday, when events come to a close. In addition to reviewing runway shows, she writes about how public figures use their images as a form of communication, and answers readers’ questions in her weekly Open Thread column for Styles.
In an interview from Paris, Ms. Friedman discussed what an average day on the Fashion Week circuit looks like, how she thinks about designer clothing for consumers and how social media levels the fashion playing field. This interview has been edited and condensed.
What is a typical day like in Paris during Fashion Week?
I’m slightly atypical because I’ve got shows and then I’ve got to write reviews. So, like my fellow critics, my work doesn’t end when the shows end — it almost starts when the shows end. It’s 8:30 p.m. now, I’ve just got home, I’m going to eat dinner, and then I’ll write my review.
I can go to between four and 10 shows a day, plus presentations and meetings. There are screaming crowds of fans outside almost every show now because of the growth in celebrity brand ambassadors, especially K-pop stars, who have truly incredible, obsessive fans. They line up for hours outside the shows. The whole thing is very chaotic — and a bit like a school reunion, because you see a lot of the same people every season, from many different countries. And then you sit and wait, and the show is maybe 10 or 15 minutes.
