By Nadine Kam

In the front row at Miss Sixty, Maggie Gyllenhaal,
Hilary Swank and Demi Moore.

Hit the tent at Bryant Park today for a 10 a.m. Miss Sixty show. It ended up as a full day of standing in lines, which anyone who knows me know I hate. There’s standing in line to get your seat assignment, then standing in another line to actually go into the Tent or the Salon where the show is being held, while they make sure everyone from the previous show has exited another door.

If you have a seat assignment, it doesn’t pay to show up early. Ivana Trump has this down to a science. The Fashion Week veteran was among the last to arrive at the Carlos Miele show, and the first to leave. She breezed in and out so quickly, no paparazzi in the main tent documented her arrival and departure.

Within the show tent it was another story at Miss Sixty, when the stars arrived in ample time to be photographed. Sitting side by side in the front row, though arriving separately, were Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hilary Swank and Demi Moore, all casually dressed but radiant (one designer complained in the WWD Fashion Week supplement that the stars should try harder to dress for the occasion, but the risk would be alienating one designer by wearing another designer’s work). Any money they spend on upkeep is definitely worth it. Overhead lights were not flattering on any faces in the room, leaving pretty much 99 percent of the crowd looking haggard, but the stars showed no trace of wear, stress or sleeplessness.

Oh, my bad. Clive Owen was sitting next to Demi, but I didn’t get a good photo of him because his head was turned away from her every time. I also heard Mischa Barton was in the house, but I didn’t see her.

“She’s so pretty,” women behind me cooed when they spied Gyllenhaal.

You can spot the stars by following the cameras. Every time one shows up, the swarm moves in unison. Heaven forbid you should be a B-lister when an A-lister shows up. Perry Farrell also showed up with his wife, but as a musician, he wasn’t recognized by the lensmen focused on faces they know from the big screen. When the lights went out before the show started, they came back on brighter than before, and Demi was prepared, having donned a movie-star size pair of shades.

I realized I had nothing to wear so I wore the DKNY and silver Malandrino skirt I bought a few days ago at Woodbury. That worked out as silver appeared in abundance at the Miss Sixty show, inspired by Andy Warhol’s 1966 film, “The Chelsea Girls.”

Seeing silver at Miss Sixty.

Next stop was at the Cynthia Steffe show in the Salon, where the house was packed but I didn’t spot any stars. As a more commercially oriented retail line, it’s probably too sedate to draw them out. As designers clean up for Spring/Summer 2008, so has Steffe. Usually known for embroidered touches, bows, whimsical buttons and other details, her current collection appears more restrained and more ladylike than girly. Blousons and dropped waist skirts give women back some shape currenty lost in cocoons.

After the shows, I exited the tent to decompress before unloading another 5 pounds of magazines at home. Sitting in Bryant Park to change back to rubbah slippahs, I was handed a flyer by a PETA “cop” there to protest use of animal skins as fashion. Rubbah slippahs are approved apparel. Earlier inside the tent, I saw a woman change out of her black velvet wedges and into white rubber slippers, while another with taupe suede pumps with gold stiletto heels changed into gold ballerina flats. “I do that, too. It’s a killer!” another woman told her.

Sergio Davila took over an upstairs gallery
at the Chelsea Art Museum for his menswear show.

In the evening, I headed to the Chelsea Art Museum for a change of pace with Sergio Davilo’s men’s show. “California Dreaming” was the theme, with inspiration taken from surf chic. Button-up shirts and jackets were often paired with casual check and striped shorts. I couldn’t read the expressions of the men; the women were looking at the male models.

Mostly men in the crowd at Sergio Davila’s show.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 4:59 pm and is filed under New York spring 2008 shows, Scene spy, Fashion shows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.