Facing Fashion Week With a Frozen Face
The life of a high-flying fashion personality is thrown into chaos when he’s struck by a debilitating facial paralysis on the eve of the industry’s most important see-and-be-seen party.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_5760,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F47a6d237-3854-422e-a362-cb514fa389e9_1280x720.jpeg)
Illustrations by Max Schieble
It was the 1st of September, 2013, when I lost myself, or thought I did.
Glancing into the foggy bathroom mirror that morning, I didn’t immediately sense that anything was wrong.
It was the cusp of Fashion Week and I was anxiously styling my friend Ann Yee’s show while simultaneously covering others as a writer for various fashion outlets. And I was excitedly waiting for my younger cousin Lisa to finally trek from Maryland to step her size-eight stilettos out of her provincial suburban life and into my world.
I’d never felt more alive than I did that year, hustling for multiple assignments, jetting cross-country to report them and writing remotely, everywhere from a coastal city in Italy to the mountaintops of Austria. In addition to writing, I was styling for Capitol and Virgin records, developing looks for young artists, and also lending my eye in putting looks together for fashion shows. Simultaneously, I was an on-camera personality for three shows: one o…
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