Inside New York’s most fashionable bus (invite only!)

Likewise, transportation. For the true VIPs, there are black SUVs waiting outside of every show, ready to shuttle them to the next one in comfort. For everyone else, there are taxis and Ubers (try getting one at the same time as everyone else!) or the subway (a recipe for blisters when wearing heels).

Fashion Week is also a logistical and geographical puzzle, with many events happening one after another throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. How does one get from Theophilio at the Freehand Hotel near Gramercy Park at 6 p.m. to Tory Burch’s show at the Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg at 7? Or from the 5000 show, held at noon in the Marble Cemetery in East Village, to Cos at 1 p.m. in the Agger Fish Building at the Brooklyn Navy Yard?

This year, the Council of Fashion Designers of America, which organizes Fashion Week, had a novel idea: What about … a bus?

A bus! It’s not the chicest — it’s giving Megabus — but it will do. The bus has a New York Fashion Week logo on one side and an advertisement for Shop With Google, its sponsor, on the other. Inside, there are outlets at each seat for charging phones and a bathroom no one would ever dream of using. And riding it from show to show — because everything at Fashion Week has a hierarchy — are the people who are just important enough to need it: critics, foreign press, some buyers for specialty boutiques. Those who aren’t quite black-car material, but still hold status. The bus, of course, is invitation-only.

“I feel very glamorous,” says Paper Magazine’s special projects director, Mickey Boardman, dryly, boarding the bus after a Jonathan Cohen presentation.

“We forgot the champagne,” says Roxanne Robinson, a freelance fashion writer, after Monday’s Aknvas show.

“This is like a party,” says a French journalist, en route to the Sergio Hudson show.

Fashion publicist Chris Constable has been named captain of the shuttle. This means he’s the schedule master, determining which shows the shuttle puts on its itinerary. He has the task of herding its passengers onto the bus after each show, like a border collie in a field of lambs.

“With last season’s difficulties in trying to go to and from Brooklyn,” says Constable, “this was a very manageable way” to move important people from place to place.

Freed from the burden of thinking about transportation, the passengers on the bus are jovial. There are first-week-of-school vibes — old friends ribbing each other and catching up.

By the end of the week, “there will be, like, drag bingo,” Constable jokes. “I wonder if we should play movies?”

But if you eavesdrop, there are also snippets of opinion — a preview of reviews yet to be written.

“The clothes are just for some life that’s like — who has this life?”

“It’s such a sexy show.”

“Was she wearing it, or was it wearing her?”

Critics have given the fashion bus mostly positive reviews. The good thing about the CFDA running the bus is that Constable can communicate with shows to try to delay them until the bus arrives. The bad news is that, if traffic gets truly gnarly, everyone on the bus will be late. It took one hour to shuttle passengers from Toteme to Rachel Comey, and the brand tried to hold the show for its passengers, which included Vanessa Friedman and Stella Bugbee from the New York Times, Marie Claire editor in chief Nikki Ogunnaike, and CFDA CEO Steven Kolb. But Comey could not wait forever. The show started shortly before the passengers walked in.

En route to Saturday’s Prabal Gurung show at the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building archway in Lower Manhattan, the bus came to an abrupt halt on Franklin Street, between Broadway and Church Street. On one side of the narrow street was a poorly parked car. On the other was a dumpster. In between was a bus too wide to fit, threatening to make everyone late. Not the fashionable type of late — the miss-the-show type of late.

“I think we have a blockage,” Constable says.

“Just pretend we’re in Paris,” Robinson says. “This happens a lot in Paris.”

After a few minutes of confusion and some attempts to back up the bus — impossible, because other cars are behind it — Constable makes the decision to offload everyone. It’s a five-minute walk to Gurung’s show.

“It’s like a disaster movie, and I’m Shelley Winters,” Boardman says.

All the drivers behind the bus begin to honk. Constable goes to the end of the block and persuades each driver, one by one, to back out onto Church Street. He did not realize that being bus captain also involved becoming a traffic cop.

“That’s where I draw the line,” Constable says. “I can’t help a bus back up.”

Good fashion often involves an element of drama. Constable stands in the intersection, directing traffic. The fashion bus makes its way down this runway, and heads off to its next one.