Nora Crotty
September 15, 2015
Serena Williams
wearing a fringed skirt during her HSN fashion show. Photo: Getty
I was hesitant
to go to Serena Williams’s fashion show for HSN, aka the
Home Shopping Network. A runway presentation… for clothes designed by a
professional athlete, sold on TV? It just didn’t seem… New York Fashion
Week-legit. I usually think of HSN as selling things like rotating curling
irons, blenders, and old lady brooches.
Apparently, Anna
Wintour didn’t agree.
The expertly
bobbed tennis fan and editor in chief of Vogue, looking teeny-tiny in
one of the event space’s director-style chairs, was getting chatty with
Williams’s rumored/definitely boyfriend, Drake, in the front row. Beside
Wintour was an empty seat, then mega models Gigi Hadid and Lily Aldridge. I
leaned in to ask Wintour who the lucky person was sitting between her and
Hadid. Smiling, she shook her head, “I don’t know!” Then Drake’s bodyguard
escorted me away. It was real, guys!
Drake and Anna
Wintour having the best time ever at Serena Williams’s show. Photo: Getty
Everyone else
took their seats, and the lights went down. The space between AW and GH
magically disappeared, though no one new was there. Fashion is magic. There was
a strange lag time before the show actually started: The photographers at the
end of the runway, right by where I was sitting, were growing restless.
Someone’s phone rang through to voicemail, and some guy said aloud, “Isn’t
this the same Serena who lost the other day?” #rude.
Finally, the
show began. I kind of thought the models would be what fashion people refer to
as “real girls,” i.e. women who maybe aren’t six-feet tall and size 2, and are
thus more relatable and/or accessible for the HSN crowd. But no, they were
regular model-y ladies, marching down the runway to several Drake tunes—who, by
the way, didn’t bat an eye at the sounds of his own voice booming over the
sound system.
I was also
surprised at how trendy and wearable the clothing, itself, was. There was
suede, fringe, and leather (which Williams thinks is “really fun”) to spare, cut in sporty, slim
silhouettes. The palette was overwhelmingly what I’m going to
call “neutral desert,” and there were bomber jackets, lots of leggings,
festival friendly fedoras, tons of slinky draping, and a few tops revealing
Kardashian-level cleavage.
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