The Ace Hotel/Opening Ceremony party: fantastic designers all in one place. Couldn’t pay me enough to go.

It’s difficult to sum up the vibe in downtown Manhattan on Fashion’s Night Out: You’ve got roving gangs of every fashiony subset you can imagine: Carries, Charlottes,  Samanthas, and Mirandas—and the twentyish girls who moved to New York to be them—doing their best to maneuver across the Meatpacking District’s perilous cobbletone streets. Beautiful, androgynous fashion students who’ve made the kind of very risky hairstyle choices involving asymmetrical head-shaving that only the very young and very beautiful can pull off.  Well dressed Europeans from hither and yon. And the entire Fashion Industrial Complex, in town for the collections and preparing for their  close-ups.

It is, in every possible way, not my scene. I always prefer an intimate gathering to a crowded one, and there are no intimate gatherings on FNO. Still, it is one evening when I do feel compelled to fly the flag. I don’t make many stops, but I try to make them good—and comparatively un-terrifying— ones. Here’s my agenda.

I am currently having a Zero Maria Cornejo love affair: her stuff does not come cheap, but nobody drapes more forgivingly for a woman’s body, ond she works within the most beautiful color palette. Also, she’s added a charitable component to her event: a portion of profits from sales tonight will go to Human Rights Watch.

Oak, one of my favorite purveyors of the black, the white, and the interestingly drapey, is hosting a Cheap Monday pop-up shop. Which excites me, as Cheap Monday has only quite recently popped up on my radar as a great source for reasonably-priced separates.

And not even a block away from Oak on Crosby Street, Benetton  has taken over a gas station and installed a pop-up store/gallery/craft workshop dedicated to “The Art of the Knit.” They’ll be selling yarn-covered everything—like even iPhone covers. And this intrigues me.

Then it’ll on to the L train for a visit to Bird in Williamsburg, where they always know how to put on a show (I know, enough with Bird already;  but indulge me). They’ve got special pieces designed for the evening by Loeffler Randall, Melissa Joy Manning, Gretchen Jones, and Whit. And a hot dog cart!