Illustration: Samantha Hahn
For this special Fashion Week edition of “How I Do It,” we asked successful women about how they manage their careers and lives during this hectic time of year.
New York’s favorite fashion publicist, Gia Kuan, began her career over a decade ago heading communications for the cool kids’ brand Comme des Garçons. In 2013, she helped open the Manhattan location of ultra-trendy streetwear and luxury clothing store Dover Street Market, before taking a break from fashion to work with arts and culture clients at Nadine Johnson. She credits her time working with the veteran publicist with helping her learn the ropes of event curation — everything from throwing an amazing party to creating “thoughtful” seating plans — lessons that would eventually come in handy during the Fashion Weeks that followed. would soon dominate.
Kuan launched his eponymous consultancy in 2019. Although still a small firm (six people), his clients, including Telfar, Kim Shui, and Stussy, are influential in the fashion field. Kuan herself has been hailed as “the first fashion publicist everyone wants to be friends with.” Naturally, Fashion Week is the busiest time of the year for her: “a time when designers use a 20-minute platform to tell the story of this season’s entire collection.” A few days before New York Fashion Week kicked off, she spoke to The Cut from her Chinatown offices about how she does it all.
In your morning routine:
I’m quite an early riser during the summer, so I wake up around 6am. There was a time when I tried to do the whole 5am thing. First things first thing in the morning: I have a dog. So I walk him around the block where I live in Gramercy. I usually listen to a couple of podcasts while I’m out. Once I get home, I have my breakfast. Usually it would be oatmeal (I make it myself) or I would make eggs on toast, or… just eggs. I am a big egg eater. Scrambled eggs, poached eggs on toast. And then I make news. I subscribe to The New Yorker, to New York Magazine. I’m usually flipping through the physical theme, which is a bit more old school, but I still like that physical aspect.
On surviving the busiest week of the year:
In the early years of my consulting, I didn’t really get any sleep during Fashion Week. So, I would get up at 4 am and not go to sleep until 1 am or 2 am. That was hard to maintain, because I only really slept for a few hours. But now I’m in a place where my team and work are a bit more spread out, so I really try to accommodate my sleep… Six to eight hours is crucial for me just to feel lucid and sane.
In team lunches:
Oddly enough, I never forget to eat, even during Fashion Week, because I love to eat. There are times when my meal schedule is a bit off, especially on very busy days when we’re only on back-to-back calls. But I always order all the lunches during our Fashion Weeks. I like to use that half hour to eat together and chat about non-work related things. We’re also very adventurous eaters, so I feel like the lunch part of the day is just about the most exciting, because we have a complete brainstorm of what we’re going to eat that day.
On what makes a successful Fashion Week:
Our goal is to make sure our customers feel good about what they’re doing, and I think a lot of the important work is done after the shows. We always have an important meeting after the fact, and we talk about what worked and what didn’t work and what we could do better next season to relieve some of the stress. That feedback and planning is very important, so that next season we are five steps ahead, we anticipate everything.
About spontaneous dressing:
In fact, I dress very impulsively, so I never plan my outfits, which most people think I do. For any event, even if it’s a very special function like someone’s wedding, I don’t really think about what I’m going to wear until very close to the day. If it’s Fashion Week, I wear whatever I feel like and get ready incredibly fast. People would be surprised. It takes me about three minutes to put on my makeup, do my hair, and walk out the door. It takes me another five or ten minutes to get dressed. I’m ready before my boyfriend, usually.
On de-stressing at the end of each day:
I’ll do little things that have nothing to do with fashion, like read The Hunger Games. Honestly, I read a lot about food. I’m always watching food documentaries, reading about new recipes, about things to eat. I also watch anime. That’s one of those things about me, I think I have quite a young spirit. I think there are some parts of me where I feel like I’m still 16.
On her Fashion Week “must”:
My nails are a big thing for me: I like to express myself through them and I always get it done before Fashion Week with my friend Mei Kawajiri (also known as @nailsbymei on IG). We have been friends forever and we always do the most experimental nails together and we have a lot of fun during these long, two or three sessions of gels and acrylics. I like having these crazy big nails; I have to feel good about my nails before Fashion Week.
Source: news.google.com