Dispatches from New York Fashion Week

Our own Rachel Baker is covering Fashion Week, and keeping a running account of her experiences for Boston Daily.

After almost missing my flight from Logan—thanks to an overconfident coworker-driver who misses the I-90 exit while gloating that a stranger told him he “looks like a fast driver”—landing at JFK feels like a miracle. Until I get to baggage claim and learn that there is, indeed, a taxi strike. With cabbies scarce, no one in the stagnant, roping line gives a damn about my needs: The Charlotte Ronson show starts in an hour, people! Lindsay Lohan’s sexy-tomboy “friend” Samantha Ronson is DJing! What if LiLo shows up and I miss it?!

I end up sharing a cab with a psychoanalyst (!) to Midtown, then hot-foot it over to the venue Eleventh Ave., and make it with a few minutes to spare, considering the most punctual of shows start a good half hour after schedule. There’s no LiLo, but plenty of under-25 look-alikes in all her blowout and bronzer glory are on the scene in addition to the entire cast of the SOAP Network’s reality series, The Fashionista Diaries.

Held at Fashion Week central, Bryant Park, the next show is Nicole Miller’s pretty/wearable/predictable collection, which mostly attracts less than high fashion “celebrities” to the front row: Ivana Trump, Jane Krakowski.

Not predictable: I literally bump into America’s Next Top Model’s “noted fashion photographer” Nigel Barker on my way out of the tent. Totally starstruck, I can’t look away. Totally grossed out, he gives me a sneer but I like to think it was a lusty sneer (like he’d give Nik, his Cycle 5 favorite, when she’d do the same ‘safe’ head cock photo after photo, week after week).

Onto the LAMB extravaganza. With Gwen Stefani at the helm, it’s the biggest and most celeb-studded show of the day—wonderfully b-a-n-a-n-a-s. In addition to all the fashion editor biggies, the front rows brimmed with the likes of Gavin Rosdale (with his and Gwen’s ear-protected toddler in tow), Sophie Bush, and P. Diddy. The sixties-inspired spring line is vintage Gwen—funky and fresh—but this time with a more professional, knowing polish: graphic shifts, tiiiight colored stovepipes with plaid jackets.

Also, I think I see Lacey Chabert. She has bangs. That Claudia!!!