When said out loud, "Fashion Week" has a double meaning — and for anyone who's ever been a part of all the action, feeling weak is not only par for the course, it's often the reason we love fashion to begin with. So in honor of the moments of chaos, beauty, and excitement that made us feel weak, we present My Fashion Week-ness, a compilation of accounts from some of the industry's biggest players. They're spilling their most memorable stories from Fashion Weeks gone by and the ones that keep them coming back for more.
If we tried to sum up supermodel Christie Brinkley's career, we'd be here all day. Instead, we'll update you on what the mom of three is up to these days. Apart from chasing storms in East Hampton, Brinkley is the face of denim brand NYDJ, the "original slimming jean." That's right — at 62, Brinkley's still fronting campaigns, not that we're surprised. (Nor are we surprised that her IMG-signed daughter, Sailor, is following in her footsteps).
Recently, we caught up with Brinkley on the NYDJ set and asked her to tell us a story from back in the day. Naturally, it's wild.
"Well, there was the time I was on the Champs-Élysées, it was the French collections [for] Harper's Bazaar, and Bill King was the photographer. We were shooting without a permit — we weren't supposed to be there — and were being chased from one end of the Champs-Élysées to the other. We just kept moving. We'd been up all night. It was back in the '80s, so everybody was getting crazier and crazier as the night went on..."
"They pulled me out into the street and were screaming at me, 'Put this dress on!' and I'm trying to get dressed in the middle of everything — and I got the dress on. Then, we hear the sirens and the police start to come, so they're like, 'The police are coming! Let me get this shot! Quick! Get the hat on!' And it was this big feather hat! I was so tired. It had been all night and the sun was coming up and he was like, 'I want the sun! Right there! Get it! Put the hat on your head!' But the hat wasn't staying on. And they took out a big hat pin and stuck it, and I said, 'That's my head!'
"And they stuck the pin into my head to anchor it to my head. I was like, 'That's not my hair, that's my head!' And they were like, 'Just get it on!'
"It was this insane frenzy. And in that moment, I turned around and a tear flew out of my eye, and I was like, 'I can't do this anymore!' — I was done — and that was the shot. You can see the tear in my eye. At that moment, I was like, 'Okay, I do have my limits with what I can do to get the shot. A hat pin in my head is not a sacrifice I'm willing to make.'"
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