I don’t have a car! At fashion week!! So I’m typing this into the Google Docs app on my phone, who knows how many feet below ground level, waiting for a train to take me from Concorde Métro station near Chloé to Porte de Saint-Cloud for Balenciaga. The street style this far down looks a little different to what I saw leaving Chemena Kamali’s (final?) show just now. There are fewer platform clogs and maxi dresses of milk-white chiffon ruffles, more Sambas and jeggings. Fair enough: those were designed less for digging into the earth’s crust than gliding above it.
But down here, with people going about their days, is evidence of Paris Fashion Week’s most exclusive – okay, wait, I just knocked someone’s sandwich out of their hand as I was changing lines at Saint-Georges – street-style trend: a worn-in tote bag with a model agency’s name printed on it. That is surely the ultimate IYKYK status symbol, hanging inconspicuously – though with the words “IMG”, “Storm”, “Next” or “Elite” obviously turned outwards – from a six-foot-something’s shoulder. You can buy all the rare-edition Double Flaps you want, but they will sadly pale in comparison to these mass-printed schleppers a random 19-year-old got because they were deemed beautiful enough to own one.
Which is the unfortunate truth about getting dressed for fashion week. If you are genetically predisposed to capture a photographer’s interest, what you’re wearing barely matters. The image still registers as beautiful. As writer Lauren O’Neill put it, when tasked with dissecting the style tribes at London Fashion Week, even “an unassuming Uniqlo long-sleeved top and a big woolly scarf that can only be described as sort of cheugy” telegraphs that “you have literally just closed McQueen”. But those bags also casually signal that the wearer is just here to collect a cheque. They’re not wrapped up in the fashion circus, the politics of seating arrangements and whether they got a Mercedes or not. They will get paid and move on with their lives.
“Wearing a premier tote to castings is like a badge of honour, and a subtle assertion of dominance,” says Alec Enwonwu, 24, when I come up to street level and find her waiting for a casting with a Premier bag stuffed with a book, a Tupperware container and spare heels. Dominance, I suppose, over other models from less prestigious agencies, but also over everyone else. What about us, though, the short and the ugly? Can we also get our gnarled and hirsute hands on an I’m Pretty™ tote? “They’re a hot commodity, and exclusive to models,” says Enwonwu. Which is exactly how an item keeps its cool: it stays in just a few people’s hands, the drawbridge violently snapping shut on everyone else’s fingers should they even enquire about owning it.