Everyone at Vaquera's School-Themed Show Would Have Gotten a Dress Code Violation

From ELLE

Like my fellow hardworking fashion colleagues [Ed. note: I am in no way involved or related to fashion, and these people are not my colleagues], I have been obsessed with the Vaquera show, I dreamed of attending the Vaquera show, of seeing all of the…. styles…. and….. clothes… ever since I first heard of it, at approximately 9:43 A.M., when I replied to my editor's 8:34 A.M. email containing the address. Finally, the culmination of a lifelong obsession (if I were three or four hours old)!

Just like I do every Tuesday at 4 P.M., I am loitering outside an empty Chinatown public elementary school. It's the second to last day of fashion week, and it feels like an accomplishment to not only be unfashionable, but unfashionably late to fashion week. I'm one of the few people who is strikingly NORMAL. The other people in line not only look like they're meant to be there, but that they know they are, but also that it's an accident. My outfit is very My High School Best Friend Who Was Also Very Mean To Me-she has obviously left some sort of permanent mark-skinny black Madewell jeans, an oversized vintage Misfits shirt, and a bucket bag I found at Beacon's Closet and stuck a safety pin through when I realized I'd been scammed into buying a broken, disgusting bag with the label pulled off, so I don't even know what brand it is. I'm waiting for “middle class 2007 teenager” to be really in style, I guess. Maybe it's my lucky day!

I join a line of people who are supposed to be there, and a nice woman types my name into her iPad, makes a facial expression I do not know the meaning of, and asks me to stand off to the side underneath a tree. I almost start reading the Bob Woodward book that I bought on the way, but I am very ashamed of buying it because I was born in 1990 and am thus suspicious of anything popular or promising salvation except for skincare.

Once ELLE.com’s editors turn up, we’re shown to our microscopic seats in the gym. P.S. 042 has very New York Public School vibes. As a graduate of P.S./I.S. 187, I am horrified, masking my buried childhood trauma under a cool “Fashion Week” smile, and stuffing my nostalgia down. But isn’t it fashionable to be in extreme psychic pain because of your tortured, beautiful childhood? I doubt the chairs are authentic to the school, though, because they give me pre-school rather than elementary school vibes, or even younger than kindergarten, but they’re actually very comfy.

I had focused on being one of the only pear-shaped people in a room, but these chairs are a great equalizer-everyone looks like an overgrown adult, almost as if we've walked into an R. Crumb comic. Because of the surprisingly comfortable chairs, a repressed memory of almost getting arrested for shoplifting at Whole Foods in 2006 surfaces. This, I would later learn, is kind of what Vaquera is about!

I'm in the first row and recognize no one. This is when I realize they're playing, like, noise sounds and not music. It sounds like an animal dying, or escaping right before the predator makes the final move, or maybe a bat trapped in a closet? I'm pretty into bats now because I saw a video of a bat eating a banana. The program says someone named Katie is wearing something called BAT STUCK IN THE GYM. I want to tell my editor about the bat video, but the words turn to ash in my mouth. But they have to see it, a voice inside me says. Maybe it's my conscience?

And then suddenly it's like, spooky sounds, which is very on trend. A voice deep inside me that is not my own whispers, Show them them the bat video. I reach for my phone, but suddenly a HUGE WAVE of THE HARRY POTTER THEME SONG rips through the gym. It makes me laugh in a scream way, and I wonder if I'm the only one. Someone walks down the aisle and I hear applause but then realize that now they're just playing clapping sounds. No one is actually clapping. I was about to clap! How embarrassing for me.

All the models are wearing white shoes, either sneakers or little heels, and walking weird. Not in a normal fashion way where you're like, Wow, that is so chic and beautiful. It's a lot of different weird walks: One guy is like, hunched over and barrelling down the runway. Others are more graceful, but they all have a lot of personality. Each person that walks down the runway is wearing a mish-mash of fabrics that create beautiful, breathtaking, absolutely unwearable and impractical outfits. It's very The Cute but Annoying Girl You Babysit Is Doing A Whole Thing Now, She's Pulled Out Every Sheet From The Closet and It's Just, She Has So Much Energy.

It's a mix of my favorite things: back to school, a mix of weird and hot people that’s so mixed together you can't tell the weird from the hot, impractical art, and bats, and a DJ mix of songs that they played at the ice skating rink at 145th street. And also lies, because the promised "BAT STUCK IN THE GYM" is not an actual bat, but a black dress.

There's the spiky-haired model wearing a pink puffy thing that only goes up to his nipples, and a string of cheerleader-types (nice try, but NYC public schools don't have cheerleaders, or at least the four schools I went to). THEN THERE WAS A WHOLE-ASS GHOST, like a white sheer sheet covering her entire head, arms, legs, until the ghost's feet's tube socks-because everyone was wearing tube socks. There were a lot of things that had holes worn over things without holes, and even some graphic-tee type things: dangerously close to a normal outfit but not quite.

Everyone walking would have been given a dress code violation, but each one would be worth it. Just like the way someone in school would try to do your makeup, and she would promise it would be great-"We'll make you dewy but not greasy"-but then you'd end up both dewy and greasy, and because you're young and confused you don't know how to get exactly what you want.

My favorite is Meg wearing BUNNY BRA, TWISTED HOODIE, BOUDOIR SHORTS, because she is ME! She isn't me, and I wouldn't have worn that in high school, but I would love to wear it now.

The end of the show, where I literally got choked up and almost cried, was the THE BIG ONE, BRYN'S SENIOR PORTRAIT, a huge puffed-out princess dress that looks like a graduation gown. Like, imagine if you actually looked good at a graduation instead of sweaty in a plastic blue bag? It's incredible.

Ultimately I give the whole experience ZERO STARS because it was amazing and funny and moving, and made me think and feel things, which is so annoying because it's easier to be "over" everything and look for the flaws. So, Vaquera, I HATE you because I LOVE YOU. Not only very high school, but very fashion.

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