High Class, After Class

Thursday night, a few of the other fresh-faced graduate students followed the Res Life folks down Mercer Street to something called "Fashion's Night Out". Now, I am completely oblivious to all things stylish and cool, but apparently New York City's (and, therefore, the world's) finest designers open their showrooms (boutiques? stores? shops?) to the public and throw a party. I was lured into tagging along by the promise of free stuff.

That free stuff, it turned out, was booze.

Oh, sweet mother of all that good and pure, free booze. I mean wow. Between you and me, I'm poor. Oh sure, I worked very hard all the time last year and allocated a good amount of that money toward savings, with an eye to the future (which is now the now). That means nothing, however. If you live in NYC and you don't have $700 in cash on you for a quiet Thursday night out, you're poor. So you can imagine my delight when that which I wanted most--an adult beverage--was being handed to me by a tuxedoed gentleman, absolutely gratis, just for showing up.

Champagne, wine, beer... all of it was mine for the having, simply to thank me for browsing the collections of fine designer wear that I could neither afford nor pull off in public. While I felt a bit dressed down in my Old Navy jeans and Reebok sneakers (to my credit, I was wearing a white collared dress shirt, but that was a coincidence), I made the most of rubbing elbows with the likes of Marc Jacobs, Vera Wang, and Josh Hartnett (apparently, he enjoys clothes). This makes me a celebrity by association, and thus I have a line of men's tighty-whities coming out soon.

Despite the cordiality of the affair, I still very much felt like a part of the nameless, faceless throng that would show up at Jay Gatsby's parties. I didn't know the names of half of the designers whose parties I was attending, and I only showed up due to curiosity and the promise of cabernet savignon and Heineken. Still, free booze takes the edge off of guilt, and soon I was chatting up the girl working the door. She didn't say so, but I could tell she was really impressed with my opinions about William Faulkner and the No Child Left Behind Act.

I would like to thank all of the designers (who are coincidentally my neighbors) for inviting us in and serving us wonderful spirits even though we clearly came off like the freeloading twenty-somethings that we are. I promise that if I could have bought something, I would have. I can't promise I would ever wear it, though. I would need a lot more free booze for that to happen.