“Sorry about that,” Chase said. “Gotta get that fixed.”
As soon as Jess saw me, she let out a scream and ran over. She was wearing one of her self-made tiered iridescent skirts and her vintage Sonic Youth T-shirt tied at the waist. Over her shoulder she carried the ever-present monster bag filled with all kinds of emergency makeup, hair spray, and sewing stuff.
We both screamed and hugged.
“I’m sorry I’m so late,” I said.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, but what are we going to do?” she said.
“I don’t know. Why are all the models outside?”
“What?! You don’t know? I texted you.” My cell phone was still connected to the car charger.
“Know what?”
“There’s no room!” she shouted.
I took in the whole scene for the first time and almost fell into shock. Serious apoplectic shock. There were literally hundreds of people everywhere. The tiny gallery was crammed with them. And really cool people, I might add. Hundreds of fashionable people had converged on the Below the Line Gallery, proof that the posting and e-mail blasts worked. These were at least some of the fashionistas who followed my blog. I wanted to stop and examine each and every one of them—how they were dressed, their ages, their style. But there was no time.
“I guarantee you, they were not here twenty minutes ago,” Jess said. “It just happened.”
Chase sauntered over. “You’re the promotional genius,” he said, giving me a smirk. “Where are we setting up?” People were clogging the street. Cars were honking, having trouble getting by.
“There’s not enough room,” I said, stunned.
“Gee, you just figured that out?” Chase asked. He eyed Jess. “This could take awhile.”
“Well, we’ll just have to go up there.” I pointed to the elevated highway above us. “Have you ever shot up there?” I asked. Chase acted like he was afraid of me, as though I might bite him.
“Do you mean—the High Line?”
The High Line is an official New York City park built on the rusty remains of a derelict elevated railway that used to wind down the West Side Highway. It is now filled with walkways, plantings, seating areas, and little amphitheaters. Jess and I would walk up there every time we went to the stores in the Meatpacking District. There were happenings and events staged up there every day. Jess and I had talked about it, but never in our wildest dreams did we think we’d have the chance to do a fashion show there.
“Yeah,” Chase said. “I’ve shot a bunch of times for Tommy Hilfinger after he waited about three months to get a thousand permits from the mayor’s office.”
“Can we do it on the fly? It’s a pop-up, right?”
Chase grinned. I could see he was into it.
“Okay, boss, it’s your show.” Chase whistled to his crew, and they sprinted ahead with all of their equipment and lights.
“Have all the models come with us. I’m sure everyone else will follow,” I said. Jess and I began marching straight down Ninth Avenue, just ahead of our entourage of provocative models in their dazzling dresses and a horde of gawking fashionistas gathered behind us. It felt like a movable party. It felt like we could take these people anywhere.
“There are no chairs and no stage,” Jess said to me as we walked. “Where will the important people be?”
“With everyone else,” I said. “Who knows who’s the most important person in this crowd anyway? They all could be.”
As the crowd snapped pictures with every conceivable camera and phone, we made our way to the High Line stairs at Fourteenth Street. They would post these pictures on their Instagram and Twitter accounts, but we had to make sure that the runway was the show they’d remember.
Walking into the covered Chelsea Passage, where the High Line cuts through the Chelsea Market building, we encountered a sea of cool blue fluorescent light that bathed the tunnel columns mingling the High Line’s industrial architecture with the cityscape around us.
Chase had already set a backdrop curtain, and we took the models behind there. Massive concert speakers and a DJ deck already had been set up on either side of the runway, and there was my friend Bennie doing a last-second tech check.
“Lisbeth baby! I knew you’d call me!” Curly-haired Bennie, wearing a funky pinstripe suit and shades like some tripped-out mobster, was scratching an electronic turntable. He had gotten my text. Jess and I felt like the littlest kids at the biggest party of our lives.
“You’ve got about thirty minutes, I figure, before the cops shut us down, so we have to start right away,” Chase yelled over the rising din of people settling in. “Good luck.”
Everything in Jess’s monster bag came out. We lined up the girls, touched up their makeup and hair, straightened the lines of the dresses, pinning anything back that didn’t look right. Then, abruptly, the lights went out and the whole area was dark, muted, and quiet. In hushed whispers, Jess reordered the models at the last second.
A spotlight snapped on, and Bennie kicked up the music, cranking the volume. An infectious beat reverberated, turning the cavernous space into a giant stereo speaker.
“Go! Go!” Jess yelled, pushing the first model onto the stage.
Bright flashes lit up the architecture as a wall of fans with iPhones and photographers fired their shutters. The models had to walk toward that blinding spotlight just concentrating on keeping their heads up and putting one foot in front of the next while trying to look natural. I’m not sure they could see anything in the extreme contrast of dark and light.
I slipped out from behind the backdrop to see the show and the audience from the wings. Jess’s last-minute sequence ordered the dresses by color, and it was a revelation.
The show opened with a series of white looks that quickly evolved. Sea-foam green was followed by solar yellow and honey orange. Little by little the bolder colors emerged, illuminating the chiffon dresses and the layered skirts within skirts.
The dresses came to life with attractive details—a ripple of sequins, a plunging neckline, a backless dress, a cuff—offering new energetic concepts of style and design. The shimmering blues were the most stunning. They had an almost stellar depth.
No ordinary models, Sarrah’s friends were an entire show unto themselves. They were as lithe and lovely as any girl who had ever hit the runway. But these were massively tattooed, slash-and-burn, hard-core, multiracial beauties with some seriously hairalicious hairstyles.
One girl had the words BROKEN DREAMS tattooed across her chest in goth lettering. And of course the most ravishing, purest one of all was Jannush, a tranny friend of Sarrah’s who strutted down the stage in mile-high stilettos. Truthfully, the models were the perfect contrast to the dresses themselves, and the tattoos were a counterpoint to Jess’s lyrical inscriptions.
Sarrah had contributed in other ways as well. She had taken some of Jess’s journal entries, the ones stitched into the hems of the dresses, put them on a loop on her computer, and projected them across the ceiling above the models. The audience ahhh’d and oooh’d at each one, loving it.
VIP spotting turned up some surprising people. I waved to Flo, who had brought Rachel Zoe with her. Flo gave me the proudest smile and a thumbs-up. I scanned the crowd and thought I spotted Gabby but wasn’t sure. There was a lady in a strange lavender outfit who seemed important. And then Betsey Johnson and Isak! Where had he been? Thank God he was here. He threw me a kiss.
The lighting was austere and dramatic. The music was shamelessly danceable. It was an instant pop-up fashion event for Designer X beyond our fondest hopes, but the dresses and looks warranted all the attention.
As Jess told me before, a dress had only one chance to make an impression, and after that it had to deliver on the cut, the style, and fabric. The first opportunity was the only opportunity, and this was it.
Sarrah’s model friends were a big hit, too, and I’d never thought girls that tough would blush and giggle, but they did. And Jess … what can I say about the best friend a girl could ever have? She had already made me seem to be someone way more sophisticated than I could ever have seemed myself. At the same time, she was the kind of friend who never stopped laying it on the line. While never wavering in her support of my crazy ideas, she kept me centered and honest even when I was telling the biggest lies of my life.