Last Thursday night, the fashion masses flooded the streets of New York and 500 other cities around the world. This was Fashion’s Night Out, and the city unrolled the fanfare.
In SoHo, Broadway looked like High Street during the first night of camp Yale. Completely flooded with doe-eyed fashion amateurs (freshmen), condescending veterans of the event (upperclassmen), models, photographers and designers. To say this event was heavily attended would be an understatement.
Fashion’s Night Out is a veritable feast of all things fashion for those even remotely interested in the industry. Stores in major metropolitan areas around the world stay open late and have events to incite shoppers into actually shopping.
This year, New York boasted appearances by fashion greats like Anna Wintour and Alexander Wang. But it also boasted fashion not-so-greats, like Kim Kardashian, who was promoting her new perfume (but mainly herself). Shops around New York, and, I presume the rest of the world, offered refreshments and special items like personalized Converse sneakers at Bloomingdales (sneakers for $75?) and anime comic books at Philip Lim.
But for me, the highlight of the evening was the Azealia Banks concert at MAC. The new face of T by Alexander Wang and a budding fashion icon, Banks performed songs off of her highly anticipated album “Broke With Expensive Taste” on a stage in the middle of the makeup store.
Interest in fashion is omnipresent at Yale. While Yale’s presence at FNO wasn’t particularly large (there were no busses shuttling students down I-95 and there didn’t seem to be a mass exodus at the train station), there were a couple students who were drawn to the buzz.
Yalie and fashion blogger Jen Mulrow ‘14 went to FNO this year to document the circus.
“I wanted to take pictures of [FNO] because it’s an event with all different kinds of people,” said Mulrow. “It was really crowded and there were lots of lines, but there’s such an excitement to it.”
Most attendees of Fashion’s Night Out were 20-somethings looking for free drinks and famous people, and although it only lasts until 11 p.m., the streets were completely filled with people until long after closing. It seemed as if the open container law was briefly abandoned (and also traffic laws), as beautiful young New Yorkers drank plastic flutes of champagne on the sidewalk and danced down the middle of Spring Street chanting the lyrics to Banks’ hit “212.”
Luckily for Yalies, FNO happens once every year, and next year maybe more will make the trip to indulge in a night of fashion-y debauchery.