Albatross

While this island, a great distance from modernized civilization, seems irrelevant to our cosmopolitan lifestyle, Jordan's film demonstrates the immense impact that our material waste and manufacturing has on both the bird population, as well as the larger scope and livelihood of nature universally.

With beautiful craft and thoughtful tact, the film is not guilt-inducing, but rather motivational with it's message of positive changes and a peaceful environment we are all able to contribute to.

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Culture

"Lovers & Friends" Takes Over Strada World

We planned to meet for a coffee the next day to chop it up, but understandably, they were exhausted (as was I after fashion week), so instead we texted about it! Read the exchange below:

Tell me about the Jazz band that opened the night, that was fun.

Iza El Nems— and I went to elementary school together (PS9). I remember him at 5 years old, carrying around his saxophone all around town, which at the time was the size of his whole body. Emilio ended up being a crazy tenor saxophonist and composer and is currently the lead sax player in the bands of Stanley Clarke N 4EVER and City Blackman Santana.

He was a member of the late Wallace Roney’s Quintet for the final three years of his life, sharing the bandstand with Ron Carter, Jimmy Cobb, Buster Williams, Stanley Clarke, Patrice Rushen, Lenny White, Gary Bartz, Steve Turre, Christian McBride, Rene McLean, Antoine Roney, Donald Harrison, and so many more. He’s always on the road with Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on the road in the United States.

Okay enough gassing but just giving credit where credit is due. Anyway, when it came time to put the show together I literally was like there is no one else I want to do a live performance on opening night and called him up immediately. He was on tour when I called but timing worked out and he graciously agreed to perform with a few of his bandmates. It was a full circle moment. Brought tears to my eyes. That shit was beautiful. Can’t believe we were running around causing havoc during recess together. Two of us curly haired kings.

Sophia Wilson— The jazz band was completely Izzy’s idea! Emilio is Izzy’s friend from childhood. The second she suggested to him I was immediately sold. Live music brought the perfect elegance to the evening, and Emilio was even a born and raised New Yorker.

What was the process like for selecting the images and the ways in which they were presented?

IEN— We wanted the majority of the photos to be billboard size — sort of this attempt to reclaim space. TilePix, our sole print partner for the event, gave us a range of amazing mediums to use (lenticular prints, inkjet, glass, etc.) so we chose mediums we thought made the most sense for the images at hand. They've been super supportive throughout the entire process, which is nice. We wanted the works to make an impact and speak to the true nature of the series.

SW— We knew from the start that we wanted our work to be as large as possible in order for us to take up space in our city. Having the portraits of our native NYCers take up as much space as possible was at the heart and soul of our project from the very beginning. Given some time restraints and some bumps in the road, many of the prints ended up being a bit smaller than intended, but we are definitely still thrilled with the outcome. A lot of the decisions of which prints would be what size was instinctual, and it would hit us at the same time that a certain print needed to be made a certain size.

We knew from the start that we wanted our work to be as large as possible in order for us to take up space in our city.

Was it different to see it physically in a space rather than digitally which is how most of your audience has encountered the images so far?

IEN— Absolutely. It was seeing an idea that was born from Sophia’s studio come to fruition, seeing it come to life after all the trials and tribulations. We ran around the city like little kids in a candy store, jumping from shoot to shoot, titties bouncing baggy pants dragging, mid laugh or mid cry, we stood connected, grounded in our vision and driven by our motives. Our outfits alone took up enough space to fill a stadium. In those first few months both Sophia and our project gave me light, it allowed me a moment to breathe during a time where I had never felt more suffocated, stifled creatively, unable to grow and undeniably heartbroken.

As we worked I began to write. I wondered why now when I’d never been more unsure of what I had to say. Our subjects helped me just as much as Sophia did. And once we started speaking we did not stop. To see Sophia smiling ear to ear running up and down the block, it brings tears to my eyes. We worked so fucking hard. You have no idea how hard we worked. To be 22 in the city that never sleeps I struggled with where to swim in a swamp swarmed with the sea creatures of my past and demons that lay down tracks in my mind. It’s like we swam to the gallery. New tracks were created. Beautiful songs. Strong, potent, and powerful.

SW— One thousand percent. As a photographer who prints everything by hand in the color darkroom, I am really attached to the importance of physical art and an analogue process. Being able to blow up my color darkroom handprints felt like an exaggeration of my photo process, which only felt natural to Lovers + Friends.

When people see photos on a screen, you’re not able to view the original hues, or the textures at hand, and the papers we chose were all so intentional. Even for instance, the lenticular print which was one of my favorites – there is just no way to show something like that on a digital screen. There’s also just something about seeing these people congregate around your art in real life that you can’t feel over social media. You can have a billion followers and feel lonely, but when they all come together in real life it’s a completely different feeling that leaves you so fulfilled. It’s art in itself getting to watch everyone’s faces as they look at our work.

As PoC & women artists, there are so many obstacles that can arise, but together you’ve been able to establish a standard and a great foundation from which to build upon. What do you see as the next step?

IEN— There have been a lot of lessons learned in this process — and many, I'm sure, left to learn. I think the magnitude and scale of this project in such a short timeline is a testament to our team, the way we work individually, and more importantly, collectively. For every person that believed in us there were 100 that didn’t. That’s fine. We’re moving and shaking.

As an Arab NYer I value spontaneity and improv., working in stride as a homage to the generation of Ab-Ex painters who came before me, once filling the streets of the city with colors and movement. In short: I’m a fucking nut, born from the belly of a heartwarming mother, stemming from the seed of Militia Men and streetwalkers, a product of my generation that looks outward hoping to reach a dimension that cannot be seen outside of my dreams, except when I paint it, forming those thoughts into a reality of color on contact sheets or canvas… or Lovers & Friends.

The next steps? We’re going international with this show. Already working on the creative templates for our next few projects. Don’t want to stop.

SW— Thank you! This has definitely been anything but easy. Getting people at large companies and publications to treat us as they treat our male counterparts has been a huge challenge which is crazy to me because I've been working in the industry for over 10 years… Also, what Izzy and I have put together has been so monumental already and we have the stats to prove it. As far as next steps, we want to take this show to other cities! Paris is at the top of our minds currently. A lot of the works are still for sale so getting those sold is definitely a next step, too. We would also love to do some sort of spin-off campaign and we are in talks with a few major houses about that currently. Not to mention we also both have our solo careers to attend to.

Has it gotten easier? Considering you had to contribute your savings to even make this possible.

IEN— Everything has its ups and downs. Everything is hard work. I’m just proud of us. Really really proud of us.

SW— Why does it feel like it’s only gotten harder? Haha. I guess the bigger you get the bigger the hurdles get.

Culture

Alex Kazemi’s Y2K Cruelty Crusade Party Novel

“A lot of my decisions of creating immoral, unlikeable, repulsive characters was because I feel like that’s more real,” Kazemi says of his debut novel New Millenium Boyz. A teen drama set at the beginning of Y2K, the book follows Brad, a senior who meets two new students, Lusif and Shane, during his last year of high school. Constantly watching MTV, idolizing people like Marilyn Manson and the aforementioned Columbine shooters, the three boys gaybash, hurl racial epithets at students, mutilate rats on their Handycams, all in an effort to escape the blandness of suburbia. Each shocking action escalates as they attempt to surprise themselves, and the sheer plunge Kazemi must have done to create each grotesque thought is one of the most consistently astounding facets of the book. “I took out this new book on Hitler at the library, but I got too hard reading it,” Lu, the worst of the three, admits. “I ended up just jerking all night.”

Kazemi’s characters are horrendous and heavy to read, and it wasn’t easy to sit with them during the book’s long writing process. “It’s not a happy thing every morning to work on this. I’m dealing with very intense, dark things,” he tells me. It’s bursting with pop culture references — what song is playing on the radio, food items the characters eat, what band is on everyone’s shirts — one reference took about two or three hours to fact-check, he says. “Probably the reason why it took ten years was the fact that it was a period piece and the research was done in libraries, university databases, messageboard archives, archive.org, YouTube home videos, pictures.”

The early 2000s, Kazemi says, was the most recent period we were all tuned into the same content. Brad and his friends constantly call each other up, ask if they saw what just happened on MTV. “I was trying to capture this last moment of adolescent culture that was controlled by an arena of systems. It’s not like your generation with a billion different algorithms brainwashing you and separating the culture around your peers. You might not know a Twitch streamer your friend really likes, or even a porn star your friend really likes from OnlyFans or Twitter. Everyone gets their different cultural reality, and it never really merges people together.” Whatever I scroll past daily is likely completely different from my friends. “So much of cultural camaraderie came from that glue and that system of pop culture being simplified,” he says.

New Millenium Boyz first showed up on Tumblr as a snippet titled “Yours Truly, Brad Sela,” where it attracted the praise of artists who were online at the time and took notice in Kazemi’s drive and pivot to artistry after working as a music journalist. People like Marina Diamandis, Lana Del Rey, Charli XCX, the trifecta of melancholy sad gay pop. He no longer keeps in touch with Del Rey, but in recent years, has expanded his celebrity repertoire — he’s on a first-name basis with Bret Easton Ellis, whose American Psycho feels like it harbors New Millennium Boyz as a prequel, and in 2018, Taylor Swift invited him to come backstage to chat before her blockbuster Reputation Stadium Tour.

These chance encounters are due to the occult study of magic — he’s an open practitioner of Kabbalah, and allegedly manifested the Swift meet-up, a creative partnership with Marilyn Manson and Ellis, and more. His first book, 2020’s Pop Magick, detailed the experience of visualization, rituals, and sigils in order to bend reality to your will. Madonna posted herself reading it, something Kazemi visualized, and he attributes much of his career success to his practices. (Surprisingly, he sat the recent ‘Super Blue Moon’ out: “lots of planets are in retrograde,” he explains). “Everything is because of magick,” he says, “I visualized talking to you.” He points at the image of me on his computer screen, but I can’t be sure if he says this to every person who interviews him.

Pop Magick also documents his terminal offline-ness: rare for a young person, a writer, but also for someone so invested in culture. “You have to unplug the IV drip of the internet when you’re writing a book,” he explains.

He’s surprised, then, when I mention the current mainstream literary skew towards fiction that soothes or acts as a comforting blanket rather than excites or provokes. Think of the willfully uncritical revisit of Lolita that sparked discourse last month, or the countless Emily Henry reads that promise a satisfying conclusion over intrigue or human flaw. A Little Life author Hanya Yanigihara was very publicly critiqued for writing intricate, traumatic novels where gay men undergo countless hardships and pain, “only so she can swoop in and save them.” A recent Lux Magazine piece found flaws in Jen Beagin and Melissa Broder’s latest novels depicting bisexual women — Milk Fed’s narrator, the author writes, “treats the object of her desire as an abstraction rather than a person,” which is the point of the book. The narrator doesn’t see her partner as a human, which makes for an exploration of fetishization and the underbelly of our psyche. Is a healthy, normal relationship really the most interesting plot for a novel?

Kazemi has no desire to write a candy-coated revisionist book. “I think that’s very dangerous. I don't think morality should be a part of fiction or characters,” he says. Part of the inspiration for New Millennium Boyz, he says, was borne out of seeing John Greene books like The Fault In Our Stars when he was younger. “I wanted to subvert [those books]. That was my first reaction, being like, ‘Fuck this saccharine, sanitized version of being a teenager. I’m gonna make the dirtiest, worst depiction of adolescence that I can figure out.’”

True to his word, Boyz is a heavy read — test readers had to take several breaks. He wrote “really depraved, fucked-up things that haunt me,” for example, when the boys ambush a girl with Down’s Syndrome, attacking her with SuperSoakers full of their urine. “That was so gross and horrible, so sad,” he says, but to make a complete, final product exposing people’s nostalgia of Y2K, and the horrible cruelty of teen boys at the time, he had to push creatively to see how deplorable he could make these characters. “If I choose to make a really gruesome portrait of something, I always want there to be a sense of purpose or intention or meaning. I’m not interested in vapid shock for the sake of nothing. I hope that every calculated shocking decision through the prose and the narrative was meant for a reason, for the story.” During the scene where they carve open a rat, Brad notes, “Boys feed on the lust of other boys.”

When I bring up the cultural climate of the internet he’s missing out on, the quick-to-cancel, high alert Twitter users that are happy to misread a work of satire, instead projecting the novel’s themes and behaviors onto their author, Kazemi isn’t that nervous. “Maybe someone will go after me in that way, and just be totally offended by it,” he admits. “But I think if anything, a liberal person or a feminist should read it and see that I’m exposing a lot of the corrosive animated aspects of growing up as a young man in the Y2K era.” Already, there are one-star Goodreads reviews, lamenting the book’s misogynist dialogue and latent homophobia. “If someone is just gonna be reactionary and outraged about it… I mean, there are smart readers and there are dumb readers,” he sums up. “Also, it’s a weird fucking time. Don’t straight girls read The Sluts by Dennis Cooper on TikTok and stuff? It’s a totally bizarre time.”

Most of the boys’ horrendous actions are on camera. In their suburban environment, the boys lust for something more, and start videotaping themselves acting out — on drugs, carving ‘SATAN’ into each others’ forearms with knives — producing Marilyn Manson-esque snuff films. Of the three of them, Brad is the most self-conscious, to a debilitating effect, which produces the novel’s most interesting ideas about identity. Brad has fun on camera, but that isn’t the real him, he insists, he was simply inhabiting a separate persona.

“You’re a victim of your own hoax,” the astute Lusif tells Brad in one scene. “Your life was so meaningless that not even your own manufactured storylines could save you from the emptiness that consumes you.” He goes on to warn, “At some point, you are going to slip, embarrass yourself, and it’s going to hurt so much worse than if you were honest from the start.”

The event that kicked the writing process into full-speed, Kazemi says, is the infamous call between Taylor Swift and Kanye West that leaked in 2016 and went on to define each of the performers’ careers, forever. “[The call] really changed everything for me, of trying to understand the private and public self and performance of the self. We all know all people at that level of being in the public and controlling your image, wanting everything to seem so seamless, but I always wanted to be transparent about that stuff.” Using Brad as an avatar, Kazemi interrogates this exhausting need to craft a meticulous image of yourself — it really shouldn’t be surprising that Snapchat and Instagram lead to Machiavillian behavior, he says. At the end of the book, when Lu threatens to shoot up the high school’s prom in an effort to occupy the same mystique as the Columbine shooters, he blackmails Brad into keeping quiet about it, or else Lu will release the tapes they recorded. “I don’t care who gets hurt as long as I become the vision that I have of myself to this world,” Brad admits. He doesn’t tell anyone.

Despite the long road of rejections and rewrites, magickal rituals and visualization, Kazemi is cosmically cool about how the book will enter the world. “I can do my best by trying to influence the universe through magic and my will and my work ethic, but whatever ends up happening, I can’t really control that.”

We’re talking about Tumblr during one of our many asides — through our conversation, he asks me questions, too, my opinion on recent novels, what I thought of his ending, as if I were a beta reader instead of someone with a finished product — when he says, “Alex Kazemi is kind of like Electra Heart, in a way.” Electra Heart is the alter-ego of Marina and the Diamonds, a persona she donned for her 2012 album of the same name. So is Alex Kazemi a façade? Did he write New Millenium Boyz, or did the person I’m speaking to? “My soul channeled NMB,” he answers. “Alex Kazemi is definitely someone who is an avatar or vehicle for me to challenge facets of culture and to get people to think and question things. But of course, my art is a part of him, for sure,” he ends.

Persona or not, it’s admirable Kazemi sought out to write about one of the scariest things we can experience — reality. The novel is obviously overly provocative and absurdist at points, but his main goal was to dig deep and re-enact what teenagers were actually talking about: cruelty, crassness, and atrocities included. “I don’t know if I derive joy out of being a provocateur,” he says. “I think it’s sort of sad that we have a literary climate where a book like this could be provocative. We should be engaging with the shadow self and the darker side of the human psyche and our cultural psyche.”

Kazemi’s words often remind me of when Lu uses his masterful insight on the world to make a real point — when his broken, horrible clock is right twice a day. “One thing I hope you learned from me is that reality is a horror show,” he tells Brad one day. “It’s worse than anything you could imagine. It’s too gruesome to be portrayed in art. You have to be there for it. Alive. It’s all around us. It’s beautiful. It’s going down, right now.”

Culture

Love, Nicolaia: SS24

Wednesday Empathetic savant Mellany Sanchez opened Objects of Permanence at Abrons Arts Center downtown. After peeping my head in, I train up to the dinner that Sophia Wilson and Iza El Nems throw for their new photography show Lovers and Friends. The girls, stunning in Gucci, welcome guests into the recently opened restaurant on the ground floor of Jean’s.

The bouncer at Jean’s recognizes me from giving me a hard time the night before about getting into Annie Armstrong’s Wet Paint Party. I say, get used to this face! I’m coming back! Tomorrow and tomorrow and not the day after but probably next week and then not again for a while. The guests at this dinner are beautiful and we’re served the last days of summer on a plate. I think this is the hottest fashion week event I’ve been to. At this point, I’ve only been to one.

Cassell Ferere, who was featured in the show, sits next to me. He was born in Crown Heights, grew up in Flatbush and lives in Clinton Hill and we talk about transplants, "People who move here need to accept New York for what it is … not a boring New York, but a risky New York. And don’t come here and tell people how to live.”

It’s easy to feel motion sickness during Fashion Week. The carousel of newness encourages disposability of trends, people and objects. Tonight though, was the opposite. Both Objects and Friends and Lovers said, don’t let yourself exist in a vacuum of self-perception. We all have responsibility to our community and what a pleasure it is to be connected.

Thursday Sintra Martins cheerfully ushers me down the stairs into her new studio, “Welcome to the dungeon.” Glassy-eyed I shuffle through the past seasons while Sintra shaves down the jagged corners of her new Invisalign retainer with a nail file so it doesn’t give her a lisp. “I made that skirt for Olivia Rodrigo,” she tells me. Large shoes to fill for a very small skirt. Star Harmony Tividad stops by before a DJ set for Frankie’s Bikinis and it’s dress up time in the dungeon. Liv has to leave because she’s officiating a wedding.

This week I learned collaborations can, and do, come from anywhere – Cash App, Rimowa, and Cosmetic Injectables (Xeomin x Vogue). At Lingua Franca’s event in the West Village my friend and spiritual Stepmom Romilly creates a banquet so stunning it could’ve modeled for Tory Burch. Unfortunately, I’m late and stare in dismay at the ravaged spread. The Lingua Franca collaboration was with a sewing machine which hums in the center of the room as guests pick out text for custom embroidery. I ask about word count so I got a sweater that said, “Nicolaia Rips: Party Reporter on Duty '' to be delivered later. A PR person rushed to intercept as the photographer was about to take a photo of me and said, “There’s a VIP I need you to get a photo of, an A-lister” and they scamper off. The door knob fell off in my hand on my way out, and I got nervous that someone would think I was stealing the doorknob and no one would invite me anywhere again. I stash the door knob in a plant.

I meet back up with star photographer Liv Solomon at the Perfectly Imperfect Party. The Hot Priest is still wearing her starched collar from the wedding ceremony she officiated! The party is a music festival of emerging talent. I’m an avid PI reader – it’s a little like the Yellow Pages, I’m forever thinking, “So THAT’s what you do?” about someone I’ve known for years socially. I nudge Joe Kerwin towards the guy signing and he says, “Oh this is [unintelligible name], he’s a legend.” Tonight all my drinks stay in my glass.

Friday I run into hot girl comedian actress writer Lauren Servideo and “professional plus-one” Emerson Rosenthal at a Marc Jacobs cocktail party at Dover Street that Ice Spice will be playing at. Of fashion week, Emerson jokes, “I can buy my own beer thank you,” as we drink Marc Margs. All the floors of Dover are open, a kleptomaniac affair if you’re freaky. There are giant inflatable legs wearing Kiki boots. Photographer Liv, and friend/HommeGirls coworker Olivia and I, worm our way up and wait for Ice Spice. Her set (In Ha Mood and Deli followed by an enthusiastic, ''I love you New York!”) was a good dream: you wake up and you’re like, “Wait, I was having a good time! I wasn’t done yet.”

After, I graciously explain the Sunken Cost Fallacy to the people in the bathroom line to convince some of them to head to the upstairs restroom, but nobody budges. Dover Street has a fancy Toto Toilet, the Rolls-Royce Sweptail of Toilets, if you will. Drunk, the Olivias and I walk by Billy on the street. He doesn’t know but I don’t like him. I won’t say why either!

A few blocks away from Embodied Spaces, Paul Hill’s new Strada World offering, is the Mirror Palais after-party (in the secret bar at Emilio Balato). Show opener Ella Snyder wears a feather cap and tells me, “Marcelo really has a grasp on a corner of femininity.” The tip jar is magically filled with 20s. Star writer Emily Sundberg, hot off a big Highsnobiety Cover, gives Carolyn Bessette in a baseball cap.

We join star Editor Sahir Ahmed and hit the Highsnobiety Party at my childhood home, The Chelsea Hotel. North of 14th, I’m seized with the anxiety that I need to call my parents. At the party I ran into my neighbor growing up who used to throw sex parties. He looked fantastic, really youthful, and was with an excruciatingly sexy woman lounging on the couches. This is the most fun night ever with the Olivias, and I feel amazing! Waiting for a cab under the glowing lights of the Hotel, I remember fondly the weeks when the T E L went out and the sign just spelled Chelsea Ho.

Saturday It’s morning and I feel terrible. I’m back at the Chelsea Hotel for Stylist Chelsea Zalopany’s baby shower. Chelsea does everything with panache. The tables were filled with silver plates of cigarettes and a pink cake that said “Oh Baby” with glittery cherries.

Onward to Anna Sui in the screening room of The Crosby Hotel. Set in front of a beautiful aquatic animation by Jeannie Sui Wonder, the mermaid inspired collection closed out by Amelia Gray said, “It’s no fun being the most fun girl at the party. It’s actually very hard work!” And also, “the sexiest thing a girl can do is be a little like her grandmother.” There’s a fun candy buffet with Swedish fish that glued my molars shut so I couldn’t say anything dumb like, “I loved your Tiktok,” to Sofia Coppola’s teenage daughter.

At Khaite, I said “Nicolaia Rips" and the PR door girl said “Nicole?” and pointed at the top person on the iPad in a line of first name N, last name R’s, which happened to be Nicole Richie. Khaite inspired me to own a black gown that swings around my hips and also to have smaller boobs (I felt depressed after). The most exciting part was the return of the Apothecary Bag. There’s something fab about a woman carrying a bag that fits just enough – knowing exactly what her priorities are is a type of genius. She can’t schlep her computer and she doesn’t need to but she definitely has a copy of Mating by Norman Rush in there.

I attempt to take a photo of an Eckhaus Latta model with a Miffy tattoo but my camera was sweaty from my back pocket so all I got was an exquisite smudge. Anyway, I was behind the escalator so I missed a lot of the jazz of the models ascending (descending? I was behind the escalator). Eckhaus’s front row had a generationally diverse crowd comfortably and casually wearing Eckhaus, not on loan, people living in their clothes which I think is all you can want from a brand. Friend Annie Hamilton, exposing a strip of her very flat belly, said dryly when I asked for a quote, “Nicolaia, it’s me. I’ve got no opinions on this kind of thing.” Chic.

Roman, the bouncer at the Pebble Room litigiously guarding the Eckhaus afterparty door, braided his hair to fit with the agenda and god, he looked amazing. Apparently, the elevator door there has no sensor so if you stick your hand in while it’s closing it’ll lop it off. Outfit change in a port authority Taco Bell and down to meatpacking.

Saw a guy front row at Dion Lee who once started painting immediately after we had sex.

Saw a guy front row at Dion Lee who once started painting immediately after we had sex. We met because he was volunteering at the Javits center when my dad got the COVID vaccine. Good for him, moving up in the world! I appreciate Dion Lee pioneering what I’m going to term slutty utility — enough with scraps of fabric and nonfunctional bags, if there’s anyone who should be prepared for what life throws at them it’s The Hot Girl. Who but the Hot Girl needs high black leather boots with rows of pockets for five lipsticks in the same shade and maybe a gun. On the runways there are models again instead of cool Downtown friends. Sometimes there’s a mix and I think that’s bullying to the non-professional models who had the luck of having once had a couple drinks with the designer.

Speaking of models, I met model Mase at the Dion Lee afters. It was his first time at the Boom Boom Room because his recent “ex-girlfriend who cheated never wanted to go.” Dion Lee throws a good party. Ice Spice played — guess what, In Ha Mood and Deli followed by an enthusiastic, “I love you New York!”

Sunday I wake violently to torrential rain. Bad day to be in ballet flats. Went to bodega and got a coffee with sugar in a Styrofoam cup. On the subway up to the Cooper Hewitt Museum I read my book, The Pure and The Impure by Colette.

At the Cooper Hewitt museum on 91st, the biannual bow consortium is happening and we are all tied together by strands of ribbons. Things are so cute that it’s dangerously cute, gothic bride Rachel Sennott tells me, “I just want to squish people I don’t know!” The shoe choices are ballet flats, ballet heels, loafers with white socks, and then, who is that lost man in New Balance? The museum reminds Isze Cohen of “the chocolate palace in Willy Wonka where the ceiling starts dripping on you.” As the show starts, Jessica Testa from the NYT Shazams the opening song — I Am So Lucky And Nothing Can Stop Me by Harmony Tividad.

A single pearl belt. Shells printed on a shirt. A bow on the sleeve. Low riding capris. A massive black satin bow clutch. A buttery cardigan. This Sandy Girl is underwater, not because she’s a mermaid but because she’s the main character in a coming-of-age movie and she’s suspended there, swimming with her thoughts. Her cheeks are pink. Her skin is damp. In fact, everybody at the Sandy show is damp from the rain, and everybody’s cheeks are pink. Here at Sandy, bows are wings.

There’s a tiny collared bridal dress so precious it makes Linmick want to get married again. Lumia Nocito tells me the show “always feels like a dream.” Elizabeth de La Piedra is the epitome of personal flair, wearing full metal grills (!!) to the Sandy Liang show.

I get a text from The Dare: “Did the Downtown Shawty Fashion just change forever?” Liv and I decamp to NoGlu to nibble a blueberry muffin and decide. Girlhood has a whole economy which is NOT experiencing a recession! But I do think we may have hit diminishing returns on cuteness. Ultimately, this fashion week has not changed Downtown Shawty Fashion forever so don’t burn your bows.

Back home I stare at my framed photo of Paris Hilton tied up in microphone cable wearing Galliano Dior heels. What would Paris do, I wonder? I know what she wouldn’t do, which is microwave a handful of baby potatoes until they explode. If you microwave a potato for only five minutes, it cooks it but the downside is then you have a microwaved potato. I pass my roommate on my way out the door, she’s brushing her teeth. She tells me my right eye is twitching.

I’m in the elevator going up to the 30th floor of a waterfront sky in FIDI. The other two passengers up are a gorgeous girl with a BBL and a guy wearing a tee-shirt that has a pink heart with a waxed p*ssy inside. I ask who makes his shirt and he said, “I did.” And then he kissed his girlfriend, with tongue, and said to her, “Imma f*ck you later.” And then we all got off the elevator.

Gaultier x SSENSE x KNWLS made fashion week horny and somebody had to do it. It was Mad Men meets Mad Max, corporate dystopia at its best. People were complaining about being “soooo tired from fashion week” and “it’s a Sunday,” but everyone despite the griping danced, and the complaints dried up because the party was just FUN, it was dark, gritty, loud, sexy and fun. Stop thinking so much, they said, enough with the seeing and being seen. You couldn’t see anything here, especially if you were The Dare who was wearing sunglasses the entire time.

If you could see, there were holes punched in the drywall! There was an office building used for a rave! A single moist towel passed around to everyone at that party to put on branded temporary tattoos! A fire alarm sound going off every 30 seconds (someone tells me that at the restaurant on the floor below somebody ordered a dessert with sparklers and set off the alarm but why were the sirens in tempo?) A bathroom line so long people discussed peeing in ferns. A girl draped in barbed wire! A VIP section and a VVIP section within it! I was standing around nursing my drink when four security guards importantly raced through the party holding barricades and quickly penned Doja Cat and Ice Spice in, creating a spontaneous new tinier VVIP section where the girls danced with their entourage. Free Ice Spice!

Taylore Scarabelli, senior editor at Interview, impossibly chic owner of a haircut that makes me think about ducking into the bathroom with scissors, tells me “It’s Grannies night out.” Matty Healy chaperoned Gabbriette and her mother. Liv Solomon the Beautiful got stuck at the VIP barricade (she was saved). Harmony Tividad thinks Tina Fey and Timothee Chalamet have the same face. Alice Longyu Gao dispenses party wisdom: “Don’t go so hard that you don’t have fun.” Friend Chloe Wise and I talk Ancient Aliens. A fan approaches an unnamed musician and says casually, “next time you’re in LA, we have to f*ck. You know, squirt fest vibes” like one musician might ask another to collab.

Monday My sweater from Lingua Franca arrives, they’ve spelled my name wrong. My name is Nicola in the lingua of Franca.

Tuesday Star writer Madeline Cash and inimitable it-girl and friend Isabelle Rea throw a party for the new magazine Nuts from Civilization creator Richard Turley. The first time I met Isabelle we were nineteen and she was wearing three pairs of underwear she shoplifted from Urban Outfitters.

Wednesday I am a puppet and Carly Mark holds the strings. I recorded this show like I was an iPad kid at a Wiggles concert: details like the ribboned Puppet heels had me enthralled as did a model doglike carrying her red dress in her mouth. There was a mesh dress with bikers all over, wide khaki pants with deep puckered pockets, a single ripe banana strung around a model in a leather harness, a silly riff on the PNP lodestar cookie bag. Recently I watched a clip from the OG Gossip Girl where a girl’s choir does an acapella version of Glamorous and that’s how PNP made me feel: in total adoration of the world built for me and somehow in a high school auditorium. I think Carly is the most exciting designer around and if anyone had a brain they’d tap her to head Alexander McQueen. “Saw paparazzi outside mobbing someone and it was literally a dog in a sequin cape,” said Friend Mary Russo.

Back home I put away all my clothes solemnly until I can see the floor again. There’s been a lot of whining about who belongs where, and who should be allowed to enjoy oneself at Fashion Week but I am so lucky and no one can stop me! I’ve seen Ice Spice so many times her security detail has me listed as a person to monitor. Ultimately, though, it’s time for me to go pay for my own beer again.

Yours,
Nicolaia