In interviews with photographers, editors, and style directors, Trebay outlines the hassle of doing laundry all across the world. Fashion Week is, after all, “like an expedition, an adventure, like mountain climbing,” says Alex Badia, the style director of Women’s Wear Daily.
If you aren’t lucky enough to rent an apartment with a washer and dryer, problems during Fashion Week can include:
- If you’re American you apparently never know if the setting is on the right cycle!
- Temperatures in Europe are weird because of the ~ metric ~ system and you could end up with shrunken “doll clothes!”
- European hotels never wash anything sensitive (ex: jeans) correctly!
- If you do drop off clothes to be washed, you have to time it just right or else you’ll miss a show or a flight to Milan or the chance to eat a delicious Instagram-perfect gelato or whatever!!!
If you’re curious, Trebay painstakingly lays out his Parisian laundry routine which includes going to a 16-washer laundromat in the First Arrondissement sandwiched between a restaurant and a Margiela boutique (chic!). But his denim is a different story:
A full load at this place costs €4.50, and dryer time is calculated in 10-minute increments, each costing a single euro. Since I prefer my jeans air-dried, I bypass this step and take my clothes back to my hotel room to be strung up from shower rods and towel racks and even, during this particular week, the chandelier until the place starts to look like a Neapolitan alley.
Listen, the men gotta do what they gotta do, even if it includes hanging designer jeans from a hotel chandelier.
