Zac Posen!

This past Friday was the last day of New York Fashion Week. I had been happily perusing photos of the shows all week online at Jezebel, making my own internal judgments on the outfits.

Not that I'm in any way an expert on fashion. I think for the most part, I just know what I like and I mostly base it on what I would enjoy wearing. I do however feel like I've gained some measure of knowledge by watching Project Runway, which is, as Jezebel calls it, "The Greatest Show on Earth". I mean, I would never be able to design or sew those outfits, but I can make opinions about them and tell if they're well-made.

Anyways, on Friday night there was a special event for Amex cardmembers - a restaging of Zac Posen's show for his Spring '09 line (which he had just shown that morning) and a cocktail hour before the event. Amex raffled off tickets to employees for the event and I won!

So Anne (a fellow Amexer) and I met up Friday night, first for dinner and dessert in Chinatown (yummy, yummy Shanghai soup dumplings and Chinese pastries) and then over to Bryant Park for the cocktail hour and the show.

Both of us had some trepidation about what to wear, but we ended up both wearing cute work dresses and heels. However, the weather was horrible and super wet, so we were pretty beraggled by the time we neared Bryant Park. So we made a quick stop in Starbucks to freshen up beforehand. And in my case, switch out my flip-flops for black heels.

I think we clean up pretty nicely!

At the cocktail hour, we drank some yummy drinks made with some pretty strong liquor and sweet stuff. We also got to sample super yummy sandwiches from 'wichcraft including a french-onion-soup styled sandwich made with guyere cheese, onions and toasted bread and a delicious cookie sandwich made with lemon poppyseed cookies and strawberry jam.

Outside of the fashion show tent, where we were for cocktail hour, they had a huge exhibit of red shoes. Turns out, next year is the 70th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz and Swarovski Crystal (who made the original ruby red slippers for Dorothy) commissioned a bunch of designers to reinterpret the shoe. Some were super cute, some were super weird, but all were bright red and had lots of crystals.
Here are Gwen Stefani's for L.A.M.B.

We started filing into the event area around 9:30 - it was super crowded and some people were slightly pushy, but we made it inside around 10pm.

I didn't realize how crowded fashion shows are (unless it was just because of this event) but there were nearly 1,000 people there! Usually in the photos, you just see the first row or so, so it doesn't look incredibly packed.
This is just half of the crowd. We were in the back right side. After snagging the last two seats in our row, we waited until 10:40 before the show actually started.

The outfits were really pretty and springy and looked really cute. I'm posting some of the ones I would wear (and also didn't come out too blurry).
This would be a cute work dress or cocktail party dress.
I love the draping on this. I think this would look really flattering on a lot of people.

This is so chic and wearable - especially for an after-work function.

I was able to get some clear shots of the end of the show too, where the models all walked out again.


After the show, they did a quick Q&A with Zac. It was really basic stuff (what do you get your inspiration from?, did you have to work to the last minute?, what's this show about?, etc.) but it was nice to hear him talk about why he makes clothing.


It was an overall fun experience. Having never been to any type of Fashion Week event, it was cool to experience it firsthand.

And to end this post, more cute red shoes!