Ima be honest with you. When we hopped on an early-morning plane to New York to partake in our second NYFW, we knew it wasn’t all going to be rainbows and butterflies. In fact, we spent the week prior to our depature preparing to embark on a hectic (and fashion-filled) week of sleepless nights and inevitable writers block. We packed both our laptops, both our tablets, both our chargers, a bottle of Tylenol, and our collective (and seemingly endless) pile of to-do lists. We hyped ourselves up to be the matadors of the fashion bull ring (in the most tactful and non-violent way possible), and topped up our Starbucks cards to be our pseudo-weapon of choice.

Contrary to popular belief, we didn’t decide to attend fashion week for the socializing and partying and an excuse to have a variety of content for this blog. Though these things were all pluses, the reality of this trip revolved around getting in as much sleep in as possible, making (duelful) appearances at parties, and avoiding this blog like the plauge (only partially joking). Our nights were spent cuddling with our laptops until 3am; typing away like zombies, exhausting our vocabulary, and sometimes/very often yelling at each other. With snacks.

With that said, though we attempted to prepare ourselves (mentally) as much as we could, we were REALLY not prepared to spend the bulk of our first night in a hospital waiting room; nor were we anticipating running out of food/travel/snack money after day 3. Regardless, we had tons o’ fun catching up with old friends and meeting new ones, observing lots of fashion, loitering in any Starbucks/WiFi-providing establishment, Instagramming, and eating 70% of our meals with our triplet (by default), Huan. And also/most importantly, sleeping.

We’ll go more in depth to the aforementioned “fun/sleepy times” later on this week, but for now, please enjoy our first instalment of NYFW coverage. If you decided to follow along with our fruitful Stylelist articles, you may have already got an A+ sense of what we were up to over the course of the week…but if you decided to ignore our shameless plugs, here is a review of our favourite shows from this season.

Steven Alan

Though the glamourized idea of a fashion show defines the typical New York Fashion Week picture, our favourite collections always come in the form of presentations. Steven Alan was a stand out; mixing materials and optimizing a soft palette of colours and prints. Being able to get up close and personal with the models to 1) take pictures and 2) make funny faces (re: Amanda Bynes and the English guards in What A Girl Wants) is always a sartorially satisfying experience. Plus, we get to skip the wait times that come part and parcel with runway shows. (Y) for good time management.
 

Lacoste

We were supposed to hang out in the photographer’s pit for Lacoste, but instead we ended up shafted at the back of the show with a minimal view of the runway. Regardless, we were wow-ed by Lacoste’s typical sporty influence – mixing sheer panels with structured silhouettes. We’ll always value the heavy, textured offerings of fall collections, but we were still not disappointed by the iconic brand’s spring offerings.
 

J. Crew

We’ve always been huge fans of J. Crew, so naturally, we were super pumped to attend their spring presentation. After bumping (literally) into Leandra Medine, we knew it was going to be a good collection – and although the line was full of typical J. Crew signatures, we were pleasantly surprised with an awesome collection of shoes by Sophia Webster, and a selection of embroidered/embellished pieces that added pops of colour and dimension to their otherwise typical spring repetoire.
 

Adeam

White satin never looked so good. A conglomeration of subtle prints and textures made up a completely wearble and intricately detailed collection of crops and crazy platforms.
 

Brandon Sun

He’s been labelled as “the next Alexander Wang,” and we definitely agree. Up-and-comer Brandon Sun surprised us with a muted palette of pastels and a variety of sassy fabrics molded into abstract (yet wearable) separates that made us want to drown our bodies in fur panels and leather dresses.
 

Philosophy by Natalie Ratabesi

Besides the fact that we stood 0.5m away from Anna Dello Russo for the entirety of the Philosophy show, we did manage to pay enough attention to the runway to absorb the collection of billowy whites and wide-legged pants. The location added to the ethereal qualities of the clothing, as the all-white room was the perfect setting to offset our anxiety (regarding the intense heatwave happening outside).