Vanessa Friedman on the cover of Paris Fashion Week

From Paris, Vanessa Friedman, The Times' chief fashion critic, shared what she looks for on the runway and the forces shaping fashion in this moment.

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The past month has been a whirlwind for luxury brands, models and fashion fans as designers showcased their visions at New York, London, Milan Fashion Weeks and now Paris. The hundreds of shows were nonetheless a marathon for Vanessa Friedman, chief fashion critic of the New York Times. (She says chocolate, comfortable shoes and her colleagues at the New York Times Styles desk are helping her.)

It's a marathon, sure, but very fun too. “Going to a lot of fashion shows is like going to a lot of art galleries,” Ms. Friedman told Times Insider. “So much of what you see is boring, or derivative, or silly, but then you see a show that makes you think about identity in a whole new way, and it sends your thoughts in exciting directions and erases everything else.

Mrs. Friedman, who has covered fashion for The Times since 2014, particularly as it intersects with politics and societal and cultural identity, will attend the shows in Paris until Tuesday, when the events will draw to a close. In addition to reviewing runway shows, she writes about how public figures use their images as a means of communication and answers readers' questions in her weekly column Open Thread for Styles.

In an interview from Paris, Ms. Friedman discussed what an average day on the Fashion Week circuit is like, how she thinks about designer clothes for consumers and how social media is leveling the playing field of the fashion. This interview has been edited and condensed.

What is a typical day like in Paris during Fashion Week?

I'm a bit unusual because I have shows and then I have to write reviews. So, like my fellow critics, my work doesn't stop when the shows end – it starts almost when the shows end. It’s 8:30 p.m. now I just got home, I'm going to dinner, and then I'll write my review.

I can go see between four and ten shows a day, plus presentations and meetings. There are now crowds of fans outside almost every show due to the growth in famous brand ambassadors, especially K-pop stars, who have truly amazing and obsessive fans. They wait in line for hours outside of shows. The whole thing is very chaotic – and a bit like a school reunion, because you see the same people every season, from many different countries. And then you sit and wait, and the show lasts maybe 10 or 15 minutes.

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