In fashion magazines, those of us who’ve been around a while can’t help but reminisce about how things “used to be.” We had more of everything—budgets, magazines, and controversial jean trends. In the early 2000s, Fashion Weeks (and the weeks that turned into months in Milan and Paris) looked similar in many ways and different in others. Models and socialites sat where influencers sit now; but now and then, they were hardly size-inclusive. Tax brackets also distinguished personal style: uptown girls had a uniform, downtown girls had another, and the two did not meet—unless you count running into each other (and Chloë Sevigny or an Olsen Twin) late at night at the Beatrice Inn.
I was slogging through an intern-to-closet-assistant rite of passage, but I felt that collective whoosh when the entire fashion world decamped to Bryant Park and then hopped a plane to Europe. Back at HQ, we assistants basically ran a logistical orchestra—booking town cars, juggling seating charts, and begging PR assistants on the curly-corded office phone for a first-row upgrade for a senior report on the team. And that was before tackling the faxes of lookbooks and digital camera mania: charging devices, dumping memory cards, and scribbling notes on VIP looks to request for the next issue's cover shoot with fierce determination.
