Vidal Season: A Memoir, of Sorts

An Homage to Hasidim: Gaultier's 1993 Collection was the talk of Crown Heights, as well as Manhattan and Paris

Fashion Week has concluded, and I've been reading Gore Vidal's memoir, Palimpsest, rather than ogling the must-haves that many have-nots will soon possess courtesy charge cards and/or knock-offs.

Vidal's writing style is pause-itively laden with commas, as well as delicious details that are fascinating and believable, not preposterous and ignorable. I marvel at his life and his connections to some of last century's most notorious first-named characters: Truman, Anaïs, Tennessee and Jackie.

Vidal, sans blog, proffers posthumous profiles of perplexing personalities on printed paper. Somehow, the errant behavior of shit-faced, scandalous Page Sixed socialites seems classier when Vidal recalls his mid-century misadventures. Something to consider: dead men, as well as women, tell no tales, and are, no doubt, less litigious.

And so, in homage to Mr. Vidal, I reflect on my one-and-only first-hand Fashion Week experience and a few bold faced encounters that still make me chuckle.

Please pardon the posturing, and the punctuation, but this was, for a great number of years, the most significant week of my life.

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It was 1993 - the year that Fashion Week, as we now know it, overtook Bryant Park. A coterie of club kid volunteers assembled each day to set the tents, Jeremy Scott being one of them.

Elsa Klensch was never off camera.

Before each show, formidable, intensely Caucasian ladies scooped boxes of giveaway Godiva into their handbags. Despite my one per person pleas, talons sheathed in 20 karat rings decimated our lovely displays of stellar schwag.

After the Calvin Klein show, David Lee Roth invited some of us to meet Anthony Kiedis, who was surprisingly puny and incredibly distraught. River Phoenix had just died and Kiedis was inconsolable, as was witnessed by his numerous bereaved appearances on Entertainment Tonight. It helped to talk it out, I suppose.

Roth, on the other hand, had few kind words to say about Valerie Bertinelli, who was America's sweetheart during the Carter years and was, by the mid-90's, fictionally overdosing on Lifetime, Television for Women, Sundays at four, three central.

The former Van-Halen front man also claimed to have had relations with Madonna on a rooftop in the East Village. As this was the year that followed the publication of Ms. Ciccone's Sex book, it was perfectly plausible, and frighteningly imaginable, since we all knew that he could spread his legs just as wide as that particularly ambitious blonde.

Roth had fallen on hard times and would later become a part-time paramedic before reality television catapulted him back to fame at the turn of the century. Nevertheless, he believed he was still top-billable, which I witnessed when he cut to the front of the line for an A-List after-party and proclaimed, "Roth, plus ten."

We got in, with drink tickets no less. (Does that need a comma?)

Anyway, we were young, callous and cool, so we adored drugs, which were, surprisingly, often free. Ecstasy, cocaine and aspiration fueled the frenzy before Betsey Johnson's seasonal spectacle. Johnson was particularly kind, and even more surprisingly, naturally energetic. She let us linger after our chores to watch Naomi walk, which proved to be a spectacle of genetic supremacy. All hips and legs, with an attitude that was brighter than the key light, Ms. Campbell exemplified the supermodel then, as well as now.

Donna Karan, hair askew, was a hateful shrew. She ordered us to scram once we'd swept the tent of discarded gold-foil candy wrappers.

She looked haggard, as well as hungry, which I suspect is still "the look" of Fashion Week, even now.