party chat

Joanna Coles Can’t Get Through Fashion Week Without Her Russian Military Driver

Photo: Sylvain Gaboury/Patrick McMullan

It’s not unexpected for Fashion Week fatigue to have set in by the six-day mark. But when the Cut ran into Joanna Coles at last night’s Peggy Siegal screening of My Old Lady at the MoMA, the Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief still seemed rather upbeat about the whole thing. “I like the energy, I like the fun of it, and I can choose which shows I go to,” she told us.

Fair enough, but any other survival tricks? Well, the fact that her driver was trained in the Russian military certainly doesn’t hurt. “He is unbelievable. That’s my secret. He still behaves as if he’s in the Russian military, so he’s able to park right outside the show,” she said. “He actually used to drive, apparently, cruise missiles. So he’s more than capable of driving a Prius in the New York fashion traffic.”

Joanna Coles’s NYFW Secret: A Military Driver