Beauty's Fashion: South Moon Under

Fashion Week starts tomorrow. It will be a lovely opening day. One show. One Mani-Pedi at Bliss and one fabulous AOL/Total Beauty Cocktail Party. That I am going to fashion week at all is an ironic gift from the universe. Not simply because attending shows and conducting behind the scenes interviews with the best makeup artists in the world is the dream of every magazine-obsessed women in her right mind, but also because I am shopping famished.

Growing up I was unwittingly spoiled by the diverse styles and superior-quality threads crowding the displays at South Moon Under (now also an online retailer with out posts from Philadelphia to D.C.). Upon arriving at college I was confused to find it an impossibility to buy a Patagonia Fleece and an Aliai in the same place. SMU is unique in that it dresses the customer year round for every occasion from Aspen to Turks and Caicos, to trail walking and fashionista-ing. Whether your style is Lonely Planet or Travel+Leisure, South Moon is a wardrobe miracle worker. Clearly, for my first fashion week in New York, there was no where else, North or South, to clothe myself.

Also, the SMU lovelies are my kind of girls. Each girl could easily be a personal stylist. Just the mention of fashion week had the sales associates offering up their most preciously pined after pieces, "Please you must get this just so I won't!" Adorable little cherubs all of them. Store Manager Julie Gelb however is an absolute earth angel and an exceptional example of fashion leadership. As an NYC fashion week veteran she insisted on dressing me for each occasion and location. Precisely picked pieces hung from every piece of stationary matter in my dressing room with "no-s" being quickly removed and replaced with "have-to-s." Truth be told, as I sit here packing my black and white polka-dotted suit cases with splendid akikos and Juicy blouses I am not in fact sure if I created my style or if it formed long ago under the light of South Moon Under's dressing rooms.

Read about SMU in every publication from Lucky to the Washingtonian here.