Sweaty Street Style at Jen Kao's NYFW Show

My first runway show of New York Fashion Week was Jen Kao, who decided to have her shin dig over at the Public Library on 42nd Street. As I arrived to the entrance dripping in grossness thanks to the humidity outside, there were already two lines of folks trying to get in: One massive line with a hodge podge variety of people and another way smaller one with some glammy, glitzy looking fashion fiends that all seemed to have been born without sweat glands or real problems.

Confused, sweaty, and already not up for dealing with this line fascism bullshit, I decided to take some impromptu street style shots of other brave people like me, fighting the good sweat fight.

Here were two people that were in the super long line:

This guy immediately caught my eye with his too perfectly symmetric face, pink shirt, and the fact that he looked like Patrick Bateman. (Do you think he had a hooker's head in that bag?) When I asked him what he did, he told me he was a Senior Sales Executive that works at one of those fancy 5th Avenue shops that rich Asian tourists love to drop mad currency at.

Lately I've been kind of obsessed with all things Keith Haring, which is probably why I approached this dude. First, he was super smart to bring a travel mini fan. Second, he had so much going on with those camo pants and leopard print bag that it was somehow melting my mind (that or the excessive heat). And straight up, this guy was just giving off some no-ego, all-around good vibes (which is rare in a sea of fashion douche bags).

Now here are some folks from the short, VIP-looking line:

This lady was obvi gorge, which makes sense since she was at the very "special" line. She's a common kind of NYFW go-er: the stylist/blogger. These days, stylist aren't satisfied with dressing awful rich people, they also have to "write" about their garbage ideas on the internet.

Kate Bosworth, is that you?! Nope. Just kidding. This lady was actually a fashion director for a German edition, American-based magazine. She was also another person I spotted in this shorter line that seemed pretty flawless and unaffected by the heat. Maybe it's an Aryan thing?

Finally, I decided to go up to one of the security guards and drop the name of the PR lady I've been in touch with. Then he told me to get in that VIP line. "Hurrah!, I'm one of them!" I squealed in my mind, hoping I would feel the sexy embrace of air conditioning in just a few moments.

Ended up being almost another 15 to 20 minutes untill I got in, even though Man Repeller and what seemed to be her posse of other Upper East/West Side/Jersey daddy's girls only had to wait three minutes and 29 seconds to get inside… not like I was counting or anything….

Once inside, I decided to kill time by snapping people in the front rows, which consisted of buyers, high-profile bloggers, DJs-slash-It-Girls (another common NYFW go-er hybrid), and other really good looking/well-dressed folks. Finally the show started. The house lights went dark and all I could see was the round stage that had faint glowing yellow lines. Seconds later, models walked out onto the stage with their barely-at-all-visible "glow in the dark" outfits.

"Can you see those models?" I asked the woman next to me. "Hah, barely," she said. In other words, that part of the show was a total fail. Also, no flash photography was allowed during the blackouts, which sucked cause when I tried to take a photo all I got was a blurry line from the light of an exit sign.

Then the stage lights came on, and one by one the models walked out and around the circle stage. The collection started off a bit boring, and then got a little good weird/bad in the middle, ending with some random print and color mixed outfits that seemed classic Kao. I also spotted two counts of boobie-nipple showtime thanks to some really sheer tops.

Kao seemed all about using a lot of color again (which is becoming her trademark), and occasionally using some material you see used for athletic windbreaker or shorts/pants, worn by healthy jerks who like to jog at ungodly hours of the day. I was so dazed and dehydrated by the time the show ended to forget to look at the info packet. Whatever it was, looking at the models wear this material made me just even more sweatier. Big highlight for me was seeing the camo-on-camo-on-camo outfit at the end. I think camo is going to be making a full-on comeback any day now, especially if we end up living in some type of post-apocalyptic, fight-for-survival world post-December 21st. Hmm, I wonder if Kao knows something we don't…

Overall, there were maybe five outfits that were styled decently and would try to squeeze myself into. And after all that sweating, I actually might even be able to do it. So take that, anorexia.

Jen Kao [center] at the finale of her show, and her walking mannequin entourage.