That time I got invited to Marc Jacobs (A Supposedly Fun Thing I Would Totally Do Again Part 2)

To recap from Part 1: I got invited to a Marc Jacobs after-party after I spilled a drink on a girl (if you ever needed proof that getting an invite to a party is silly to brag about, there you go.) Apparently this after-party was a big deal.

So of course it wasn't going to go smoothly.

The day after spilling the drink, I have a casting at the Standard Hotel. I go to it-- it's around 8pm-- and I'm on Twitter as I'm waiting in the hallway. And Twitter is basically blowing up about how awesome the Marc Jacobs show is. How it's like a fusion of a musical and a fashion show, how it's like setting the bar for how a show should be, how if he wasn't a complete and total homo every fashionista girl on the planet would fuck him until his Spongebob tattoo turned red.

For those who don't know, he has this picture of Spongebob. As a tattoo. Awesome.

Anyway I'm following along and starting to get pretty excited myself, as if I already wasn't (I would probably get excited about being invited to a 4-year-old's birthday party). I get done with my casting and text Spilled Drink Girl. She says they're leaving the show right then. But since I'm at the Standard Hotel, and the after-party is at the Dream Hotel, that means I'm only a couple blocks away-- I'll get there well before they do. So I decide to walk around the block a few times, just kind of wait until they arrive.

Except once I get close to the Dream Hotel, it's just a line of fucking limos pulling through the street. Like, limo after limo. Did you ever play that game Snood? The one where you shoot those little monster faces at a brick wall and try to get them into groups of three so they explode?

Yeah this has nothing to do with that, but god damn were there a lot of limos.

I decide to abandon my idea of walking around the block for fear of never crossing the street through the limo parade. So I literally sit across from the entrance to the hotel, a little ways down the road, and take a newspaper out of my manly messenger bag. I text SDG, who tells me she and her friends are on their way...except they got wristbands after the show, so now she doesn't know if she can get me in.

I finish reading about some random thing in the newspaper, probably how Mitt Romney is entering a hot dog eating contest or some shit so people will like him better (they won't), when I get another text from SDG. She tells me that they're inside the party now, that they checked their wristbands at the door and that without one I probably couldn't get in. She does encourage me to try anyway, but when I ask her if she'll come to the door to give me leverage-- to say, like, "hey let this kid in"-- she says she doesn't think she can. Essentially I've been invited to a party by someone who wasn't allowed to invite me to the party, and I'm outside, by myself, with no way to get in. ...i.e. what is also known as "My High School Experience."

Sidenote, I tend to compare a lot of what happens as a model to high school, and there's two really good reasons for that. One, high school wasn't that long ago, and regardless how long ago it was, most people can relate to that shit. Two, there's a real high school vibe put out by a lot of people in the industry. There's a sense of entitlement, of intrinsic knowledge, like "We are inherently better than you because we fundamentally know things that you don't." Or, simply, it's people who think they're popular. Fashion is, stripped of its potential for artistic expression, basically a popularity contest, and if you're not one of the cool kids then you're just not one of the damn cool kids. This applies to everyone from designers to casting directors to assistants to models. That's not to say there's not objective skill involved, just that subjective bullshit tends to win the day. Welcome to Fashion High.

This isn't totally a high school situation, however, because I actually have another party to go to instead (the one my agency people are at), and that would never have happened to me in a million years. But I do react to it as if it was high school, and by that I mean I said "Fuck this shit" and this is what I did:

I walk up to the entrance of the Dream Hotel, where no less than 4 giant suit-and-tie-clad men stand guard, with some folks mingling together next to the roped-off line of people waiting to get in. Limos are parked along the curb waiting to be in groups of 3 so they can explode.

I pause as I get up to the giants, just a millisecond, just long enough so that if they close the gap between each other to create a giant man-wall I can pivot to the side and say I was just innocently walking on the sidewalk the whole time, and why the fuck would I want to come to your party anyway? You know Mitt Romney's in a hot dog eating contest right now, right?

But they don't close the gap, in fact they don't even react to me, and instead I waltz right past them and into the lobby of the Dream Hotel. At this point I calmly yet furiously text SDG and ask her what floor the party's on. She excitedly yet confusedly asks what I mean by "What floor?," as this party's on the first floor. I calmly/confusedly/etc. look around at the mass of people in the lobby, trying to determine if I'm actually inside the party right now despite the fact that there is no music and no one throws a party in the lobby of a hotel.

I spot a less-giant but no less suit-clad man directing minor traffic in the corner though, and I decide to slip over and take a peek. Sure enough he's moving traffic into a smaller room, where yet another suit-man guards a doorway. And it is through this doorway, my brain is now telling me courtesy of my ears, that the real party is thumping.

I slowly take off my hoodie (fashion!) as I gather myself and attempt to look nonchalant-- the key in these situations-- and gently stroll up to the semi-giant as if to enter the party. He asks if I have a wristband. With all the confidence of someone certainly invited to this gig, I ask where to get a wristband. He tells me out front. I thank him for his help, ostinsably because he has told a legitimate guest where to check in, but in reality because he's revealed to me the next step in the epic quest to get one of those fucking wristbands.

I return to the front and find a lady outside with a clipboard. She asks for my name. I tell her, knowing full well that it's not on the list, or that if it is, it's probably that other guy with my same name. As she flips through her clipboard pages fruitlessly, I tell her that I'm supposed to be there with Spilled Drink Girl, who I know has to be on the list.

This stops Clipboard Girl in her tracks, and she sympathetically raises her eyes to meet mine and says: "I'm sorry, there's no plus-1's to this party."


To a normal human, this is the end of the road. I was invited as a plus-1 to a party that has no plus-1's, requires a wristband, has a guest list, and employs an army of Hulk-sized men in dinnerwear.

But I'm not a normal human, I'm Awkward Model, and so without missing a beat I...

...I'll tell you in the next one. I feel kind of bad splitting this up, but it does mean I get to post things earlier. And maybe shorter entries allow more people to read it on their feed between the waves of animal gifs? Oh who am I kidding.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I Would Totally Do Again, Part 1

As this F/W 13 Fashion Week gains traction (and quickly struggles to maintain that traction wearing heels in an impending foot of snow), I decided I'd write about one of my favorite experiences from a fashion week gone by.

The setting: New York Fashion Week, Tuesday, the afternoon after having fallen during a show. Yes, that happened. You can read about here.

I'll give you a second to laugh your ass off at me.

All good?

So after all of that I have this odd mixture of feelings, like "hope I didn't ruin this for anyone" and "kind of embarrassed" and "holy shit, awesome for my blog." But I'm also determined to somehow make up for it at the after-party that night.

The place doesn't need much description-- dimly lit, Billboard 100 music, groups of people mingling around densely populated tables stocked for alcohol consumption. As I get there, my mission seems to be going well. I make the joke that people should keep me away from any of the ledges. Several females insinuate that, for some reason, they would not be all that opposed to fucking me. Several men are even clearer. One of them approaches a girl I was dancing with and, with my attention elsewhere, apparently says "He's mine bitch I'll kill you." Then proceeds to come up behind me and nuzzle my neck with his entire face. I was flattered.

Anyway, it was a blast, particularly to someone who never got invited to parties in high school. And hopefully people went away thinking of me less as "That kid who fell" and more as "That kid who danced like the guy on Blue's Clues and knew all the lyrics to the Billy Joel songs."

Yeah, it's like that.

...except for one girl, who almost certainly put me in her own made-up category. Because within 20 seconds of arriving she was dancing nearby when her friend knocked my drink out of my hand, sending it all over my crotch and all over her dress.

Normally this wouldn't be a huge deal, drinks get spilled all the time at dance parties. Except this is a fashion after-party, and you're not spilling a drink on some chick in a GAP skirt, you're spilling it on someone wearing legit vintage Versace. Honestly it was just my fucking luck that day. I was pretty much waiting for my mom to call me with some terrible news, like my 13-year-old Beagle had died or something.

 "Mom, I can't hear you. What's that? I was adopted?"

The girl ended up being pretty cool about it though, and her friend was actually the makeup artist on the show, and we all kind of hung out periodically throughout the night to give me some measure of self-worth back, and...cool whatever, this isn't the story though.

Next day, Wednesday after Fall Down Tuesday. I go out with some people from my agency. At one point this dude walks by and I'm like "Wait I think I know you..." and it turns out I did know him, or at least what his abs look like, because it was Tyson Beckford. And on the celeb scale that night we were about on the same level, because upstairs sat-- get this-- fucking Jay Z and Beyoncé and Nas. Yeah.

In the midst of this, Spilled Drink Girl texts me and invites me to a party for the Marc Jacobs show the following night. When the agency people ask what I'm doing tomorrow, I tell them that...and they fucking lose their shit. They, who got me into this party, which includes Hova and a then-pregnant Bey and Nas celebrating his fucking birthday...THEY are jealous of ME for getting into this OTHER party. Apparently this Marc Jacobs show is the most epic fashion thing on planet Earth (that month anyway), and consequently the party is the most epic fucking party next to something straight out of an 80's movie.

  

Because honestly, what's beating this?

And I was invited! Or so I thought.

I'm actually leaving you there because A.) I need to go find food before everyone freaks out over this snowstorm, B.) I feel like I might have semi-bored you with lots of details, but I'm not re-typing that shit, and C.) It means you have something to look forward to in case you do actually get snowed in.

It's like a cliffhanger! Insert commercial here. Preferably not that Matt Terry one, it's gonna make me feel wicked guilty about whatever I'm about to choose to eat.

Aliens

The top 3 reasons, in no particular order, why I'm semi-anonymous (I say "semi-" because I will occasionally tell people about this blog at jobs in an attempt to get anyone to read it. It rarely works.):

1. It's more fun.

2. So my mother won't know how often I use the F word.

3. Every good superhero has a secret identity. Even Marty McFly was Calvin Klein/Clint Eastwood as he went about his adventures (and yes I count Marty as a kind of superhero, because if time travel doesn't count then Bill & Ted are less-likely to qualify.)

And I don't want to live in a world where these guys are not heroes.

What being anonymous emphatically is not is hiding behind a moniker so I can lambaste who I want without fear of retribution. I don't dig that. I openly despised Russell Brand for both his unfunniness and his marriage to my otherwise future wife, and upon meeting him face-to-face for the first time I extended my hand, pulled it back before he could shake it, and let him know that "Really I just want to touch the hand that gets to touch Katy Perry." (His response was a "That's a compliment!" followed by a bear hug, which caused me to slightly re-evaluate my disinterest in him.) And I sure as hell don't wear a mask when I go to MSG and shout ridiculously obscene things at LeBron James, who almost certainly never hears me but still.

The point is, what follows is a crazy story, kind of like any story in the fashion industry. But seeing as I'd prefer to remain anonymous for the sake of my mother's sensibilities/my future as a comic-book-worthy world-saver, I'll refrain from naming names here. Not that there's even anything Jezebel-worthy here, I'm moreso just bored in the airport and this is kind of an extended response to a recent Twitter exchange.

Don't you just love intros like that? No wonder nobody reads this thing. I need a fucking editor.

Anyway, I get a go-see for a job from this pretty solid photographer. It's at their apartment. To clarify, going to a casting at someone's apartment is not really out of the norm despite the protests of some my friends, particularly after hearing this story. I arrive, and the photographer couldn't be friendlier. They direct me to put on one of the outfits for the job, and I oblige.

The outfit, though, is something akin to if you had killed and skinned a muppet. It is a light-green, furry thing that comes in two separate pieces-- one that is like a suffocating cutoff shirt that stops just under my nipples, and another that feels like I'm wearing Kermit the Frog as panties.

Not quite like this.

The strange-o-meter is rising, but it still isn't blaring-- this is fashion, afterall, and ridiculous is just one of its currencies.

I get a couple of pictures taken, and then-- because it's for some sort of show-- I'm instructed to walk, as if on a runway. I'm led into the adjacent kitchen where the photographer spins me around to face the living room and, to accompany me in this act, puts on this musical selection of a Karlie Kloss interview set to a beat...

 


I am now officially rolling in this currency.

Let's recap:

--I am a wearing a tight barely-outfit that is the equivalent of a sports bra and volleyball spandex made out of green cottonballs.

--I am in the apartment of someone I just met, and it is just the two of us.

--The above Karlie Kloss music is playing.

--From the kitchen to the living room couch, I am pretending to do a fashion show on a runway.

This is my JOB, folks.

And it doesn't stop there. Finishing up my faux-catwalk routine, the photographer and I have struck up a conversation, which has drifted to the subject of philosophy because, well...I mean isn't it well-established by this point that I'm a total nerd? Anyway, the photographer asks me who my favorite philosopher is, which is a notoriously difficult question to answer since picking a favorite philosopher doesn't mean you agree with everything they say. It's like asking what your favorite snack is-- just because you answer "ice-cream sandwich" doesn't mean you only eat ice-cream god damn sandwiches all day long. Especially if you're a model.

Before I can even utter an over-thought answer to this though, the photographer lobs another question my way.

"Wait...do you believe in aliens?"

Talk about loaded questions. It really only has two outcomes-- either you answer "Yes," in which case you can totally bond over your mutual belief in extraterrestrial life, or you answer "No," and express that, and maybe struggle not to sound insulting about it, and basically just try to get the hell outta there.

The latter is the route I tried to take, though my "No" came out as a still-taken-aback "Wha-huh?," and thus I lost my opportunity to totally change the subject and got stuck listening about a History Channel show called "Ancient Aliens," and how if you're skeptical about aliens you should just watch it, cause all the evidence is there, and it all clicks together, like how they're the source of the Pyramids, and of human evolution, and...

...and nothing about the weird green fur-bikini and the distorted Karlie Kloss mixtape, which are really some of the more alien-esque things I've ever encountered.

In fact...maybe the photographer was just an alien the whole time or something?

The Model Lounge

A place set aside specifically for models, a literal Pretty People's Club where models who are pampered all day as their job get away from being pampered to be pampered somewhere else. Where being gorgeous is your all-access pass and the only I.D. you'll ever need is a photo of your last campaign. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano.

I'm talkin' about a little place called Model Lounge.

You can't help but say it sensually. Go ahead, try it. Whisper it if you're at work.

"Model Lounge."

You almost have to whisper it, right? Your lips roll and never smack together, your tongue playfully bounces off the front of your teeth when you hit the double L's. Model Lounge. It feels like doves should take flight as soon as you're done pronouncing it. Seriously, doves.

Doves.

The entire thing sounds like fiction, the beginning of an improv skit or plot point in another Zoolander. But it's not. It's real.

Here's how it describes itself for those who don't click the links in these posts (and if you don't, what the hell you're missing out!):

These "exclusive & associated privileges," I've discovered, include things like snacks, and pizza, and prizes. They recently gave away free Beats by Dre headphones to some lucky patrons. Like, just for being there. Apparently "modellounge" at some point in the history of American-English vernacular became a synonym for "heaven."

(Alternatively it may be spelled "Model Lounge," or "MODELLOUNGE," or...you know I don't even know what to capitalize here anymore. Or if you even use a "the" with it.)

The problem here is that I left out the last piece of the description I just posted. Which is this...

 
The Model Lounge is strictly for ladies.

Now, set aside for the moment that it's actually a dude who runs this gig, that he in effect becomes the only guy in a room populated exclusively by models, and that this in effect makes him either one of the most brilliant or creepy men on the planet.

(There could, of course, be male support staff or something as well, but I wouldn't know this given that I'm, ya know, not allowed in.)

The point here is that the Model Lounge is so locked down to girls that they don't even allow dudes on their Facebook page. It's basically a reversed, model-centric version of the Little Rascals' He-Man Woman Haters Club.

I clearly have a future career in Photoshop.

As if male models don't get shafted enough in this industry.

Let me clarify....THAT'S HYPERBOLE, that's hyperbole, that is hyperbole. I fully understand the silliness in complaining about male inequality in a workplace, and how opening up the Lounge to dudes would defeat the purpose of it being a safe haven for girls who get catcalled all day before they hop on the catwalk. Insert #prettypeopleproblems here, but sexual abuse/harassment in fashion isn't a joke, and providing a safe spot for these girls who tend to be ridiculously young is certainly a worthwhile endeavor.

It's just that...damnit it makes me jealous. I want to get in, at least once-- eat some gummy worms, maybe win a prize, explore the entire layout like I'm the male version of Lewis & Clark. Even though they were already, like, male and stuff.

Now before any model girls who read this rush to offer their services to get me in, keep in mind rumor has it that Coco Rocha dropped by with a guy and a girl once, and the guy was totally shut out. If Coco couldn't get a dude in there, I'm gonna need the god damn Batman or something.

Err, Catwoman I guess.

But still, I'm determined to do it. If I have to dress in drag, so be it.

(Did you like that little dilly where I just implied that anyone actually reads this thing? Oh, I slay me.)