The kids are congregating at Cafe Select on Lafayette

Big apologies for not posting on Friday but on that rain drenched afternoon I had popped by the studios of Establishment, Anita Bitton's casting company housed in that very active building on Crosby, across from the Jil Sander store. There was Starworks on the 3rd floor and as I was hopping onto the elevator I bumped into Josh from Proof 7. By the time I got to Anita's there was the mega-cute doorgirl from Sugarland popping by for a casting. Sugarland is where are the kids go to bop on a hot Friday or Saturday night in NYC...that is when they're not hopping at Mr Black's. A few minutes later Harley Veira Newton came in out of the rain, fresh from her finals at NYU draped in the best cool-girl jewelry I've seen in a while. Which makes perfect sense if you think about it. Literally 15 minutes after that Shayne from Hood By Air came by for said casting and I had to accuse Anita of staging the whole convergence.
Which she hadn't. Friday was one of those days with the gray veil of clouds releasing that hissing rain that made me realize that New York is a city we should stop taking for granted. The dynamic crackle of this town ...you just don't get that anywhere else...I felt it when I popped by Cafe Select with Ms Bitton where Paul Rowland and Peter Cedeno from Supreme just happened to have chilling for lunch. As it were, Shayne had just come back from a meeting at Supreme over a convergence I was very happy to learn was afoot. I'll say more when/if it all gels...After Peter and Paul left I turned the tape on for Anita's MDC Q+A and it was then she shared a very interesting sentiment. She honestly expressed her initial trepidation about internet-based PR...blogs...forums...twittering...There was something about all that that kind of felt ...dubious. The part of me that was Old School...the part that was trained in print and grew up on the committed glossiness of ID and The Face knows how that feels. It is very confusing the way this new branch of digital media disseminates its information with so much speed and so little proofreading (TI stands guilty on a ll counts) . But at the same time it excites me to watch how the hardcore/inside ridge of the business is learning to engage and harness the wild energy of blogs and forums and twittering. Cut to the grass roots sell on last year's Vogue Italia Black Issue for reference.
That was the exciting thing about the conversation with Ms Bitton. It wasn't just about casting. Or Anita's history. She kicked up in the back of my mind, some tough issues about the future of publishing as it drifts away from print and goes more deeply digital. What happened to the underground? Can you build sub-cultures via computers while not ever leaving your house? Where is the connectiveness of that? Our big talk had a welcome interruption by the looming presence of Rachel Williams. She looked great in that real, weathered, born-and-raised-in-NY way. I tried not to gawk as she touted the community garden project she was working on. All I could think was... what a great fashion story you could get out of her ...Rachel Williams styled like a privileged "intellectual"Manhattan woman... sort-of like Nicole Kidman in "Birth" .
That is what I meant by my taking Manhattan life for granted. What other places give you sporadically, Manhattan gives you daily. Our long and langurous lunch stretched on until twilight, at which point Lily Donaldson slipped downstairs from what I assumed was her building (you know the one on the corner of Kenmare and Lafayette). Vogue Paris stylist Julia von Boehm in hardcore hard fashionista mode slumped down on the outside bench just as Freja whisked by and it was nice to see all the kids out basking in Cafe Select's unharried ambiance. My final thought that evening was...where was fashion going to turn next...battered by recession, flooded by the the internet set and stripped of the mystique based on inaccessibilty. Well I think when you see the current generation congregating in one place, it means something new is going to pop off. And its going to pop off in New York...I can can feel the tremor.