Under house arrest, Anna Delvey hosts New York Fashion Week show at home

How far would you go to attract attention to your work?

It’s notoriously difficult to be a young designer, or even an independent designer. It is no longer enough to create good things or have original ideas. You need to make yourself heard over the noise, long enough to capture the attention of the fragmented world, so that people (those who might wear your clothes, buy them or post about them on Instagram or TikTok) look for a while enough and with enough interest to understand what is special about them.

Some designers, like Area’s Piotrek Panszczyk, do this through the most absurd work they can, attracting an audience willing to dress up in sexy bikinis and sheer stockings in broad daylight. Is there a better look to take a selfie while applauding a meditation on the troglodytic nature of capitalism, via Krystle Carrington [personagem da série “Dinastia”]than a model that seems to mix a fur coat and a crystal dress with femurs protruding between the seams?

Others do it with noise, like LaQuan Smith, who this season sprayed his bombastic bass notes with light blue and added a wind machine, but otherwise stuck to his usual delightful script.

But until this season, no one had done so with the help of a notorious society swindler and fake German heiress currently living under house arrest.

On Monday (11), Anna Delvey (real name: Anna Sorokin), who became famous for scamming a large portion of New York’s wealthy, was later immortalized by Julia Garner in a Netflix series and served a prison sentence. serving almost four years, was one of the hosts of the debut fashion show for Shao, a gender-neutral clothing brand that combines office fashion, street fashion and corsets, founded by Shao Yang.

And she didn’t just lend her (fake) name for the invitation: she also lent her address, hosting the event in her apartment in a walk-up building in the East Village (well, until her immigration case is resolved, Sorokin can’t leave the building). In fact, the event was held on the silver-painted tar roof of her building in the East Village. Her apartment is too small for a fashion show.

The show was the brainchild of Kelly Cutrone, a fashion publicist who was the subject of the Bravo reality show “Kell on Earth” in 2010. Cutrone invited Sorokin to team up at a “pop-up public relations agency” that they called it OutLaw [fora da lei] –yes, really– in order to exploit the value of your brand for the benefit of others –and perhaps begin to rehabilitate your reputation at the same time. After all, Sorokin has a history of understanding the way fashion can be used to manipulate those around her.

“It’s very difficult for new designers to attract attention, and I can get publicity — bad publicity, any publicity — just by leaving the house to take out the trash,” Sorokin said before the show, sitting in her apartment, which was packed. , with a film crew from Germany making a documentary about his life, just as his fridge is stocked with LaCroix seltzers. Not that she’s really shying away from publicity (she continues to refer to herself by the surname Delvey). “We’re just trying to channel it into something positive,” she said.

The theory is quite cynical: of course, the fashion world would be there for the thrill of staring wide-eyed at the hostess, but at least it would go. And if he was, he would have to see the clothes.

The plan worked, to a point. Olivier Zahm, the editor of Purple magazine, always in white jeans, was there, observing the scene from behind his aviator glasses with colored lenses, his trademark look. Pop singer Slayyyter also attended. As did Nicola Formichetti, Lady Gaga’s collaborator, who had moved from Los Angeles to New York just three days earlier. He said that even though he hadn’t been to a fashion show in a while, he came to see Sorokin because “I’ve been fascinated by her for a long time and, like everyone else, I’m waiting to see what she does next.” He also said he thought the pop-up agency’s name was “genius” (Sorokin told me he thought it was “funny”).

Formichetti, along with a motley group of black-clad fashionistas who had gathered outside the building on First Avenue, climbed the six flights of stairs to the roof. There were about 100 guests, Cutrone said. The models, one of whom carried a fuzzy pink-dyed puppy, arrived on a party bus as there wasn’t enough space in Sorokin’s apartment for hair and makeup.

As soon as they entered, they crowded into the narrow corridors waiting for their turn on the roof (posing for photos in front of the exit door). One of Sorokin’s neighbors, who apparently hadn’t been alerted to what was happening and was a little scared by the crowd when she arrived home with her shopping, asked everyone to be quiet so as not to scare her dog. Then, the speakers installed on the roof started blaring a Guns N’ Roses song.

“It’s a little intrusive,” Sorokin admitted, about having all these strangers in his building. “But I’ve also been to jail, and it’s very intrusive there, too. We’re going to clean it up around here.” Either way, her lease was about to end, she said, and she would have to move out.

Cutrone added, via text message, that the parade was a “guerrilla” action — they had not obtained official permission to use the roof — and, he continued, they had hired “eight police officers who are on leave and asked for payment in cash” to take care of security.

Sorokin was wearing a black Shao tuxedo with legs long enough to hide his ankle monitor, and rhinestone-encrusted shoulders. She briefly materialized on the roof to welcome everyone and pose for photos before heading back inside. The tuxedo was a sort of preview of the collection, which had a Gaultier-meets-Off-White vibe, in black and white and strident yellow. Yang, whose family emigrated from Taiwan when she was five, graduated from the Parsons School of Design and has spent the last nine years running Tailory, a custom suit company. She knows what she’s doing.

“Not everyone would take kindly to this — the fact that we’re probably going to get more attention than their work,” Sorokin admitted. There must also be a lot of people who wouldn’t like the first information people receive about their work to involve an association with a famous con artist.

Others, however, might say that this is exactly where fashion, an industry in which morals are notoriously elastic and Warholian-leaning, and which finds it impossible to resist the siren song of social media, is headed.

“There are no rules anymore,” Cutrone said. “Anything can happen.”