Breaking Fashion Rules Before I Even Get Dressed For Fashion Week

Hideo Tarpaulin Bag, Flight 001

At long last, I’m leaving today for New York to spend a week with JSlow to attend the Independent Blogger’s Conference and crash/horn in on as many Fashion Week Runway shows as we can. Thanks to generous friends at Nylon, Complex Media and Dr. Marten’s, we are on actual “lists” at Richard Chai and Nicholas K, to name a few.

It’s a miracle this trip is happening at all. I’ll let JSlow explain that tomorrow.

Anyway, I have never been around other fashion bloggers, nor have I ever been to a Fashion Week Runway show. I am nervous as hell.

One of the bonuses of getting older is the experience we gain that makes us more comfortable and confident in most situations. This is not one of them. I feel like an insecure kid trapped in the body of an older woman wrestling with what seven outfits to cram into one carry-on.

I have tennis elbow. While I can still pop-up into a handstand, I can’t open a mayonnaise jar or clean the litter box without feeling excruciating pain in my right arm. This makes dealing with luggage a nightmare. My current bright-red hard-case trunk is small yet heavy and just won’t do. With this rationalization I run over to Flight 001 in Hayes Valley to buy a larger, lighter, soft-sided suitcase on wheels. I fall in love with a puffy white marshmallow of a bag, which the sales-girl tells me will get filthy. I don’t care. It’s so clean and shiny and WHITE I buy it. I realize that I’ll be using it after Labor Day and thus it’s verboten.

Fuck that.

Our blog is 10 months old, and it has been a true labor of love. Thanks so much for taking the time to read us. It is our hope that the conference will teach us how to be better bloggers so that you will get more out of Blank Stare, Blink and new fans will find us and become part of our small community of women who love fashion but don’t love the getting older part.

Fashion Week, here we come.