How to Go to Fashion Week on the Internet

Be a teenager in Modesto, California. Have a blog: FuckYeahSkorts.tumblr.com. Spend your free time hearting posts, hyping on Lookbook.nu and watching Cassavetes movies with your bisexual pizza delivery boyfriend.

Take a break from scanning an old pile of dELiA*s catalogues to check out fashion week on the Internet. Make GIFs of runway looks and ‘90s television commercials you found on YouTube. Post them. Watch one comparing Proenza Schouler accessories to Yikes! pencils go viral. Get 20,000 new followers.

Be contacted by the fashion brand Rodarte. They’ll tell you they’re working on a Rodarte for Kmart capsule collection. It’s contemporary basics line inspired by Kmart realist writers and the bleakness of California style. They say they’re big fans of your blog and want to have you involved, that you know how to talk to their audience, and that they’ve even included a skort as one of their key pieces.

They’ll ask if you’ll edit a guest blog for them at Kmart’s website. Agree to it. Name it Kmart Realness, and produce content in a RuPaul meets Raymond Carver voice until the line launches.

Get invited to the high-end Rodarte runway show in New York. Use all your birthday money for a flight, crash with a distant relative of your boyfriend’s in Queens. Arrive at the gallery; it’s packed. Be shoved closely behind Garance Dore, become nearly suffocated by her hair. When you finally reach the girl with the list, you’re directed over to “standing” – a line of noticeably less attractive people. Watch everyone you’ve seen on the Internet breeze by to his or her seat, in streamlined silhouettes, immaculately groomed. See Kirsten Dunst and Natalie Portman, conclude they were just born with a different kind of oxygen around them. Feel like you’re in special ed class.

Be hopeful but guarded. It’ll prep you for when the girl with the list says to your line, “Ladies and gentleman, I’m sorry to say this but we’re at capacity. Thank you for coming, but at this point there is no room and absolutely nothing we can do about it.”

Or…