I recently had my first ‘fashion moment’: sitting front row at the A.F. Vandevorst SS15 collection release at Paris Fashion Week. Actually the last four months have been a long series of fashion moments, travelling half way across the world on behalf of my scholarship with the Queensland Overseas Foundation. I’ve had moments at Milan Fashion Week, several moments during Paris Fashion Week, moments working with emerging labels in Berlin, moments in New York visiting the Garment District… There have been hundreds of moments that have come along and tipped my expectations on their heads, but none that come close to my most memorable moment.
It was the kind of moment I like to think that Grace Coddington had when she saw her first two-page editorial spread in Vogue, the moment I would imagine that Jean Paul Gaultier had when he sewed the 10,000th bead on the first couture dress he ever made, the moment that Bill Cunningham is lucky enough to have on a weekly basis when he compiles the New York street style report, somehow refreshingly amazed each week at the uniqueness and imagination of his muses in unplanned places, the moment I would hope that Dior had when he realised he had changed history by the simple lengths of women’s hemlines.
I found my moment sitting front row at A.F Vandevorst for the release of their SS15 collection at Mode á Paris. Everything in that sentence reads as a moment in itself: being in Paris, being in Paris for Fashion Week, sitting front row, sitting front row at A.F Vandevorst – it’s four unimaginably amazing moments crammed into one big ridiculous moment.
But the magic that I found in my moment was much more than the superfluous exorbitance of my whereabouts. It came to me when everyone was looking left, as the first piece floated down the runway amidst a cloud of smoke to the echoing sounds of a saddened Bjork, and I was looking right.
I found myself completely and utterly absorbed in the menagerie of photographers before me, stacked on top of each other, around each other, under each other, elbow-to-elbow, cheek-to-cheek, in some kind of silently understood mess. None of them moved, but for their fingers on their cameras, and none of them spoke a sound, but for the sounds of their fluttering cameras, all syncing in some kind of photographic frenzying harmony. Snap, snap, snap, in time, with every step that the model took, click click click, pose, click click click.
There isn’t a fitting word or way to describe the vision and sound of 60-odd camera shutters capturing a million split seconds in time. I was completely wrapped up in this moment. Staring at the photographers who were staring at the runway, alongside some 200 other guests, to be later watched by the entire fashion world… It was almost as if time had stopped just as quick as it started, passing in a fleeting moment but for eternity. See – there is no way to describe it.
That was my moment. I was mesmerized, I was enthralled, I was inspired, I was reminded that fashion (in what ever form it should take in my career), is the exact passion that I will always pursue, in hunt for moments like these that move me.
Needless to say, the A.F Vandevorst collection blew me away.
The Fashion Advocate x
