Noelle McCarthy: Joys of Fashion Week a fleeting fancy

A model showcases designs by Trelise Cooper during New Zealand Fashion Week 2010. Photo / Babiche Martens

Another Fashion Week and the models are getting old. Not old old, obviously - that's not allowed.

Models don't get old, they turn 20 and they go to a farm. An old model is an oxymoron, like a pregnant stripper, it just doesn't compute. They are getting on, though, for models. I watched them this week, on the runway at Trelise Cooper and thought about all the places we'd met before.

I had a joyous mental snapshot of one girl, in green at Zambesi in the Steamship Building, walking out to Dolly Parton with a white balloon in her hand.

Another one last seen wearing Minnie Mouse eyelashes at that Hailwood show in the Big Tent, got up like a space-age mechanic in a silver catsuit, possibly, maybe playing guitar? Good times, silly fun.

Me and those girls go way back, all the way back to the time when I was new to Auckland and Fashion Week was the time of my life.

Those first few years at Halsey St when my tickets were precious and I wore my delegate's lanyard like a show pony wears a rosette.

I'd arrive at the sheds at 9am sharp every morning, bright-eyed and alive to the possibilities of photographs and free stuff, not to mention the glorious hedonism of being able to drink all day in (and this is important) bars where not everyone was allowed.

Perhaps the biggest difference between me then and the kids that throng Halsey St now is that I had nothing to actually do at Fashion Week for the first two years I went.

All we did was turn up and have fun, and cope with that heady combination of largesse and pecking order that's a snapshot of how socially significant, or otherwise, you are.

I got my first Fashion Week invite seven years ago, when I was a volunteer newsreader at bFM. It was a ticket for Kate Sylvester, for a show inspired by the Mitford sisters and I was even allowed to bring a plus one. I got a pink MAC lipgloss in the goody bag, and Oliver Driver wore a straw hat in the front row.

I don't remember my first Holy Communion, or even, really, my first kiss, but I remember my first Fashion Week show like it was yesterday. Except for the clothes.

They were long and loose and 20's style, I think, lots of floppy cardigans and floral skirts, effortlessly evocative, very Hons and Rebels, wonderfully Mitford-esque. I couldn't really take much notice, though, I was too busy rubbernecking and marvelling at Bic Runga.

Meanwhile, out in the hallways, the Eating Media Lunch boys asked unanswerable questions of the waiting celebs. I remember a few weeks later watching footage that had been filmed right beside me. Jeremy Wells asking Ali Mau if she'd rather be fashionable or deaf. As her flummoxed face filled up the TV screen, a little bubble of joy rose up in my heart. "I was there," I thought. "I was there."

Such innocence is, of course, fleeting. A year later and the rapturous bearing of witness was a thing of the past. I was a ligger, pure and simple. I've had at least two years on the lig at Fashion Week, and I ran with a fast crew. We had tickets and lounge passes and no real work to do. So we just took the piss.

We stole Moet from the sponsor's tent and had $20 bets on getting on to the front row.

We went to all the after-parties, and at least one of us took a senior hairstylist home. We accused people of stealing our handbags, and our jackets, when we'd drunkenly stashed them behind the stage.

We kept our sunglasses on when it got dark, and we flirted drunkenly with C-list celebs. We didn't have a blog, or a fascinator, and we definitely didn't tweet.

We weren't there to drum up internet traffic, or to set ourselves up with a media gig.

We were there because it beat working. We'd never admit it, but Fashion Week was our favourite week of the year. And then, of course, we grew up. We moved out of the cheap seats and the alleyways and the after-parties and made room for what? The next lot through the doors.

How disappointing, then, that they're all prigs and bloggers and bores. I shouldn't be surprised, though, at their benign self-regard. This is the generation that behaves itself, and blogs about itself and takes pictures of itself on iPhones. They connect online, not IRL, so the carnival of this week is only wallpaper really, in a sense.

You've got to admire their industriousness - their creativity and artistry and ability to keep themselves amused, but I look at the kids at Fashion Week this year, tweeting and LOL'ing and churning stuff out, and I pine for the days when Fashion Week was wild, the very definition of silly fun. The models aren't the only ones getting old.