Milano Fashion Week: Blonde is IN

Ciao darlings!

It has been far too long, but the good news is that I have so much delish, juicy gossip to dish! Let me begin by recounting my first experience with Milano Fashion Week 2011. The evening began with a plan to lurch around the Duomo area (essentially the city center, aka the center of the fashion universe this week), eat gelato, and see the sights. Well, the sights quickly turned into a live concert by Jack Jaselli & The Great Vibe Foundation (check them out on FB) and witnessing my first fashion show! As promised by my Fashion Management professor, there was a tent and runway set up in the middle of the Piazza for some shows, but this was no ordinary tent--it was translucent! I spotted my professor seated inside in the front row, sipping on a glass of champagne as photographers and well-dressed lovers of fashion filed in (with the exception of a teenager in a wintermint green Hollister sweatshirt sitting next to an extraordinarily fabulous elderly man--I am still puzzled why he would publicly accept her as his grand-daughter with that sort of fashion blasphemy!). As the show started, lights shinning, camera bulbs flashing, and trendy music way too cool for me to identify playing, I perched up on a metal railing and stared in at the magic. Granted I was not on the list, but the gelato in my hand (a cone filled first with melted chocolate and then creamy black cherry and nutella gelato) tasted just as good as free champagne and my view was no worse than the photographers in the third row of seats inside the tent. Watching the clothes (so many sparkles and furs!) float down the runway, my insides literally melted and warmed like I had just taken a sip of a Bailey's-spiked hot chocolate on a cold winter day and my eyes filled with tears. Yes, I confess the moment brought me to tears. I think it's like how you are supposed to feel on your wedding day or when you first put on your white coat after graduating top of your class from medical school or watching a unicorn give birth; the universe was aligned and I was right there in the center of it. It gives me chills even writing about it. Judge me all you want, but clothes are my cocaine and I am an addict.

Now it sounds like the night could not become any more monumental, but don't worry, it did. After the catwalk finale, Jenna, Monica, and I scurried back to our apartment because we had an invitation to join a friend of a friend at her table at the Armani Club (fashion week's hotspot for designers and those that wear their designs)! Us girls sprinted around the apartment looking for appropriately high heels, chugging a bottle or two of spumante, and updating our facebook statuses (c'mon we aren't cool enough yet not to brag about this!). After selecting dresses, taking the traditional pre-going out roomie pick, we clip-clopped down the stairs in our stilettos to be scolded in Italian by the angry doorman's wife in her nightgown. Mi dispiace, but fashion does not sleep madame! Jenna, Monica, and I met up with two of our other girls, Despina and Alissa, and made our way from the metro through the fashion district to the block of Armani buildings. We had instructions to enter through the left side door and tell the doorman we work for Vogue (in my case I was playing the sex tips editor for Cosmo because sex always sells and I wanted in to the club). Well naturally being somewhat directionally challenged (with the exception of Monica who for some reason did not have her staple map with her), we ended up at what we thought was the right door. After trying to enter on the coat tails of some pro tennis players in front of us (who were ceremoniously rejected by the doorman), a tan man inside smiled and pointed at me and the girls and I were quickly ushered into a chic bar full of you guessed it, the rich and beautiful (I was too awestruck to accurately report if any of them were famous as well). As our coats were taken by the coat check, we met our bronzed, late 40's-early 50's, ticket in. The gentlemen introduced himself as Jeff Sutton and after a little further prying we learned that he owns commercial real estate on 5th Avenue and Times Square and is in town looking at purchasing the building we were presently standing in to add to his Armani building collection. Upon further googling on blackberries, we learned that his net worth is over $1 billion and he owns half of NYC. Lucky me, he is a fan of blonde co-eds and spotted my hair from inside! He was quite friendly and engaging to all of us, even offering me a penthouse apartment in Manhattan should I choose to be flown on his private jet back and forth between Minneapolis and NY this summer to "play house" for him (direct quote from the apron and heels fan). After this standard exchange of chitchat and meeting his business VP, we were notified that the bar we were in did not in fact grant us entry to the Armani Club, an entirely different entity from the Armani Bar, duh! Jeff collected our coats and we proceeded back around the building to what we now recognized as the entrance we were supposed to use earlier in the night, only to find it swarmed with a few hundred people at this point clambering to get inside. Well we pushed and shoved along with the rest so Jeff could speak with the man with The List, but apparently real estate moguls of NYC do not carry the same weight in Milan, so it turned out that only 4 from our group could enter: Jeff, his VP, me, and Despina (my fellow blonde in the group). We took our tickets and squeezed through the rope, leaving our friends on the other side to wait for Isabelle, the friend of a friend who had a table and was our original reason for being there. Upon entering the club our first order of business was naturally to visit the ladies room. This is when I learned that I am actually a troll--a creature of midgit height and awkward body proportions. Yes, every girl in that bathroom was a certified model about a foot taller than me and 30lbs lighter. I'm not sure how much sight they were capable of through their smokey, liquor and cocaine eyes, but perhaps they just assumed I was one of the designer's dogs. Aside from the bathroom, the rest of the club's clientele included more 6+ foot models, financial brokers from all over the world, and short scruffy men that looked somewhat familiar from the designer profiles in Vogue. The saga with our girlfriends continued when Isabelle arrived, and despite having lured us there with stories of sitting at the table next to Vivienne Westwood (my dream wedding dress designer), was not able to get them in at that point (apparently the staff of Vogue and every other fashion mag was already inside). Being the wonderful friends that they are, our less blonde companions blew us kisses told us to have fun, so Despi and I returned inside the absurdly exclusive locale that Isablle promised us we were only inside because of our blonde hair. Regardless of my ticket in (be in blonde hair or a middle-aged tycoon), I followed Isabelle to her table and proceeded to drink a complimentary red bull and vodka and peruse the room. During our lap around the club I got a card from a guy who is somehow related to the Lamborghini company and an invitation for a ride in his speedy black beauty, I danced in the DJ's booth and had a photo shoot with the club's lead photographer (still looking for these images online!) and Despi chatted up a pro soccer player. Despite my troll status, blonde is truly IN in Milan right now (evidenced by the presence of only blonde models Jo No Fui show we saw earlier), and somehow many of the models inside we brunette so I received a surprising amount of attention. I would like to note my outfit at this point for those of you who may assume it was the hippobottomus receiving the attention because I was in fact wearing a flowy, feminine pink and black strapless dress coupled with my new Florentine leather jacket (a masculine accent to counteract the girly effect of the dress), pearls from my grandma, and the most fabulous metallic ankle-strap chain-accented stilettos given to me by my Mimi for Christmas and never worn before last night. So no, the rump did not attract the attention, although it is possible that after the girl who possibly grew up around a radiation spill and Despi, I may have had the third largest boobs in the place (an extremely foreign experience for me!)

The dancing and shoulder-rubbing ended somewhat abruptly when the lights were turned on sometime around 2:30 or 3am. Despi and I grabbed our coats and were headed to the door only to find that we had to use our precious tickets to pay downstairs. Thankfully, we both still had our tags to pay cover at the end of the night because if you loose it, there is a 300 Euro charge for a lost ticket. Us trolls headed back downstairs to be greeted by a mob of leggy giraffes pushing towards the coat check and exit. It was literally a mob scene, essentially a what not to do in case of emergency tutorial. In the midst of the sea of stilettos, one found the top of my foot and came crushing down on it. My reaction: I screamed bloody murder. 80lbs or not, whatever creature was wearing that shoe hurt like hell! With the screaming and hysterics that followed I was able to reach the safety of an enclave and was attended to by a burly security man who brought me a seat and a bag of ice. Following him as a doctor who spoke to Despi in a mix of Italian and English and wrote down a number of things for us to go fetch at the pharmacy for me injury. The pain was dreadful and my tears would not subside, so my quickly multiplying herd of security guards kept asking to send me to the nearest hospital. I refused and asked for a cab home and after much convincing that I did not want to ride in an ambulence instead, a taxi was called for me and Despina. When it arrived, one of the burly men hoisted me up and carried me up the stairs and set me inside the waiting cab. Everyone was quite sweet and I blew kisses to my fashionably black-sheathed saviors. When I at last made it home and inside (not as easy as it sounds since I had no key and persistently rang the doorbell until one of my kind roommates opened the door for me) I discovered a scary sight in the mirror with my tear stained cheeks streaked with black mascara and my quickly bruising and swelling foot. I climbed into bed, elevated and iced my foot as instructed and quickly fell into what can only be described as a fashion-induced sleep (for the next 3 hours before I had to rise to limp to a long day of classes).

Regardless of my injury, I think I gave just as much sass as I took from my foray into the world of Milano Fashion Week and celebrated my fashion show and Armani club deflowering by wearing my new Dolce & Gabbana top today. Everyone knows that fashion can be painful, and I lived to attest to this and swear that each limping step is so totes worth it my loves.

Kiss kiss,
your little fashionista