{"id":221662,"date":"2025-09-12T19:36:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T19:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/221662\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T19:36:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T19:36:13","slug":"chatting-with-caroline-calloway-backstage-at-new-york-fashion-weeks-preppiest-show-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/221662\/","title":{"rendered":"Chatting With Caroline Calloway Backstage at New York Fashion Week\u2019s Preppiest Show Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

The prevailing theme of New York Fashion Week so far is that everyone wants to be a preppie now<\/a>\u2014but prep is a state of mind that Caroline Calloway, the writer, influencer, and estranged NYC socialite, has never quite left.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing I find more inspiring than a reverence in Gothic castles,\u201d Calloway tells me backstage at the J. Press runway show<\/a> on Thursday. \u201cI\u2019m just so glad that the rest of the world is back on board because I never stopped loving this shit.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re huddled together on a landing of a blue-carpeted stairwell at the Explorers Club, a 121-year-old members-only<\/a> institution that\u2019s headquartered in a Jacobean revival mansion on Manhattan\u2019s Upper East Side. As we speak, a sound system blasting the Brideshead Revisited<\/a> score reverberates throughout the multi-floor building, which features wood-paneled walls, oil paintings both nautical and pastoral, and myriad taxidermy animals. Though the show is slated to start in approximately 20 minutes and Calloway is set to model a Yale-branded warm-up parka, a tan cable-knit sweater, and pleated wool trousers, she\u2019s currently wearing a strapless tea-length dress made of pink tulle paired with white Hoka sneakers\u2014a more temperate choice for a warm, stuffy old building.<\/p>\n

Calloway is a longtime friend of J. Press\u2019s new president and creative director Jack Carlson, who previously founded the prep-meets-streetwear label Rowing Blazers<\/a> (she once modeled for them<\/a> too). The two met, she tells me, \u201cdrunkenly in a castle, in white-tie\u201d a decade ago while Carlson was doing graduate work at Oxford University and Calloway was an undergrad at Cambridge. For Thursday\u2019s show, she made the trip up to New York City from her home in Sarasota, Florida, to catwalk for Carlson\u2019s latest venture.<\/p>\n

Calloway, center, backstage at the J. Press show with Jack Carlson, the brand’s creative director, to her left.<\/p>\n

Greg Kessler\/KesslerStudio<\/p>\n

\u201cBesides the fact that my best friend has asked me, a known bohemian layabout, to arrive at a call time of 7 a.m., it\u2019s been absolutely delightful,\u201d says Calloway. \u201cI\u2019ve been meeting the coolest fucking people,\u201d she adds, \u201calthough, I will say, I keep making the gaff of leading with, \u2018How do you know Jack?\u2019 and people are like, \u2018Bitch, I\u2019m a real model. I was hired for this because I model professionally.\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018Right, right, right.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Since she moved from her storied West Village apartment to a Florida condo in 2022, Calloway published her years-in-the-making memoir, Scammer, in 2023, as well as a second volume, Elizabeth Wurtzel and Caroline Calloway\u2019s Guide to Life, earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t that good, don\u2019t read it,\u201d she tells me of her latest tome, \u201cbut Scammer was the masterpiece that everyone said, so if you\u2019re gonna buy one, definitely go for the first one. I have two more books coming out this year. They\u2019re small ones, sort of collected things that I\u2019ve already published, but I really have my eye on book five. I think it\u2019s gonna be another Scammer-level masterpiece.\u201d<\/p>\n

How\u2019s Calloway\u2019s life in Florida otherwise?<\/p>\n

\u201cGod, it\u2019s so boring,\u201d she admits. \u201cNothing happens to me there\u2026 My life is just bleached by the sunlight and every day is sunny and it\u2019s like living in a white-cube gallery space, weather-wise.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wonder, Does being here make you want to come back?<\/p>\n

\u201cGirl, are you kidding me?\u201d she says, though I cannot immediately tell how she means it until she grins. \u201cI yearn. I hunger. I hunger to come back, but I think I want to get a few more books under my belt.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The prevailing theme of New York Fashion Week so far is that everyone wants to be a preppie…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":221663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,50918,5226,5225,5228,5227,5921,5096,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,1940],"class_list":{"0":"post-221662","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-new-york-fashion-week","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkcity","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-style","17":"tag-textbelowcenterfullbleed","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa","24":"tag-web"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115193013062967313","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}