It’s that time of year. Time to bring out my ancient leather jacket and root for the Yankees as they zoom towards the playoffs. The night sky is lit by twin beams of remembrance and everybody is catching colds. My mail is all junk—bargains, clearances and politicians helping me to understand how great they have been or surely will be. My schedule revolves around Jewish holidays. A thousand forgettable people return from somewhere to remind me they exist. We have a couple weeks, or a lucky month, until our clocks fall back and the leaves change their hues and drop to our feet. The cool winds whisper that fall is upon us. We were all children once, playing with toys, and running, and jumping, catching butterflies, or just loafing around in what seemed like an endless summer, until Labor Day shocked us back to school. Early September was all frowns instead of smiles. Nowadays, I watch the privileged return from those quaint little towns that occupied their summer; the cold air will soon have the Euros and South Americans scurrying back to their villas overseas. The streets of Soho and Nolita will become passable, bearable again—but not before Fashion Week ends. This year, it’s from tomorrow, September 9th, through September 16th, and the fashion flock will make it impossible to get a cab, a reservation, or cross town.

Normally, sweet Parsons and F.I.T. students become fashion week interns that behave like Tasmanian devils, knocking over old ladies and bloggers to buy stockings and hairclips and shoes. The show must go on, and anybody in their way is fair game. We are all fashion victims. A zillion invites will be hawked to me advertising incredibly important events, and the disenfranchised will beg me, text me, phone me, tweet me, email me, to hook them up where they are unwanted. I loathe fashion week. This year a lot of it will be held way up there in Lincoln Center, as something still unclear went astray at Bryant Park. This means the days should be tolerable, as the hordes will be more uptown than I tend to go. The night, however, will be insane, as the clubs, bars, and boites I cruise will be inundated with people who will be—egads!—dressed up. I’ll just have to bring out this season’s Plaids and jeans, kick the kicks into the closet, and break out the wingtips. I’ll try to blend in.

There was a time when I worked for months to prepare for Fashion Week. Before 1994, shows were hosted everywhere. Schools, showrooms, theaters, and sometimes, clubs. Suzanne Bartsch did a Vivienne Westwood show at Limelight, and I got smart. I started doing shows at Danceteria, and packed in crowds who had never seen anything like it. After a hundred shows, I had an infrastructure of models and publicity and production and stylists—and we got pretty good at it. At the Palladium, we imported big names from Europe who were interested in showcasing their wares in front of all the buyers and fashion press who gathered for the week. I was able to bring in Katherine Hamnett, Stephen Jones, Matsuda, Body Map, Martine Sitbon, a Regine Chopinot/Jean-Paul Gautier collaboration called Le Defile, and my favorite, Franco Moschino.

Franco was unknown to me when a modeling agency called me to confirm a show that was booked at Palladium. Palladium was over a hundred thousand square feet, equipped with state of the art lighting and staging. In a time before the tents, it was a hip, functional, and a very cheap place to have a show. We actually paid big bucks for the show, trying to attach the cache, the brand of these designers to our own. I told the model agency I did not have Franco Moschino booked on my calendar, I had never heard of him, and demanded the contact’s number. The PR who answered the call later became my friend, but on that day Veronika Ming and I were full metal jackets of ego, venom, and getting our own way. She insisted that I was a fool and that it wasn’t a question, an issue, or my decision. Franco wanted that date, and the Palladium, and that was that. I told her I was booked with another show, which I believe was Betsy Johnson, and to stick the phone up her nose—or something like that. She listed the show, moved ahead like it was going to happen, and pooh-poohed my protests to everyone. Moschino was going to show on that date, in my club, and she wasn’t hearing anything else. We did our research and realized that Franco was actually pretty cool, but we were actually booked. Veronika wouldn’t consider another date or even time. We were aghast. Then Betsy, or whoever it was, moved their show to another night, and the date was open. My staff looked at me without mentioning the possibility that Veronika had been right, and I, their fearless (and prone to throw staplers) leader might have been a little less right than usual. I relented and Moschino got his show. I did most of the production back then, and Franco and I became fast friends. The foreign press described him as “L’enfant Terrible,” “L’Antistilista,” and “Il Dissaratore.” The New York Times called him “The Bad Boy.” To me he was a flamboyant, fun, crazy, talented teddy bear. We laughed and played while rehearsing a thousand lighting cues and a hundred outfit changes. We cast the show with angels and enjoyed our time.

Show night came and we were ready. I was in the booth and Franco behind the runway wall. We were talking through headsets, going over the all-important timing. Over a thousand people were seated, and standing—waiting for the show to begin. Lights, cameras, action, it was on—I directed the DJ and the lighting techs, and the first model hit the runway. Franco panicked: it was too slow! He began to yell over the headset. “Send them all out. Send them all!” His English ran into Italian, and back again, as I vainly tried to calm him down: “Stick to the well rehearsed plan.” He didn’t listen, and 20 plus models were all on stage together, with no one left to get ready for the next round of outfits. I screamed at him over the headset. “Now what are you going to do you asshole? everyone is on stage, no one is changing, you blew all my cues!” The tech guys around me pointed out that the music was way lower than my voice, and that the audience down below had heard every word and was looking up at me. There are times in life that there are no holes deep enough to hide yourself in. There are no words that will take the shame away, no giving to charities that will even up your gaffe. I was a man with a lemon meringue pie on his face, in the middle of Fashion Week. I was a tramp, a vile creature with no taste or style. I was the bad boy.

The show went on after a 5 minute pause, as the girls slipped on their next look. It was the longest five minutes of my life. After the show Franco and I needed to be separated, as words in English or Italian were not going to fully express our feelings towards each other. A year later, I was sipping hot chocolate with swells in Paris during that fashion week and he was at a table across the room. His people pointed me out and he rose to the occasion. As he approached, I pondered which fist I would throw first, but he smiled and kissed my lovely wife on the cheeks. I rose and we hugged and laughed aloud about that funny night. The old ladies in their Chanel didn’t understand why the funny looking men were laughing out loud in the middle of their lunch. My eyes caught them whispering. I imagined them saying to each other, “I hate fashion week. It brings in the worst crowd.”