If there was any doubt as to what happens when Beyoncé — pregnant Beyoncé, if you want to get specific — walks into a room, she sure proved it at the Rodarte show this afternoon when, as soon as she entered, front-row guests Taylor Swift and the Fanning sisters may as well have vanished. The many photographers encircling an oversize black van outside the show suggested Beyoncé was the vehicle’s occupant, though we didn’t hover long enough to see if she would emerge. But then she walked down the runway to her seat moments before show time, and we put two and two together: that van might just be Beyoncé’s Fashion Week fortress. At first, it seems like a strange sort of Beyoncé Mobile, this double-wide, possibly two-story black van; but, perhaps, being a Mercedes, it’s the automobile equivalent of, say, an oversize sweater from a label like The Row.
After the Rodarte show, Beyoncé slowly made her way out of the sticky venue in West Chelsea, as fans and reporters tried to mob her. “I tried to ask her if she’s thought of baby names yet,” one reporter said to a friend. “She just turned around and smiled.” A little less smiley, it seemed, was Swift, who exited the venue effortlessly, for there were no crowds in her way.
