Hello, my name is Celine and I’ve been free of my fashion addiction for the last three years. Or so I thought until Mega Magazine dangled some of that oh-so-tempting juice in front of me.

The juice

Five years ago, I came to New York a voracious fashionphile—a former beauty editor about to plunge into a somewhat serious education in retail at the Fashion Institute of Technology. For a year, I immersed myself in fashion merchandising management. For another, I latched on to every fashion-related experience that came my way: web-based fashion forecasting; sewing toothpick-thin models into gowns before sending them off onto the Fashion Week runway; watching over millions of dollars worth of jewelry while the likes of Anne Hathaway wore them and Annie Leibovitz snapped away; and risking carpal tunnel writing things like “Dear Ms. Wintour” in careful cursive on hundreds of Christmas cards for holiday PR mailings.

I lived and breathed fashion. Until one day, I found myself breathing into a brown bag after getting screamed at by an editor who did not realize that the rings she requested for a shoot had been sitting for pick-up for 24 hours now. As I stood precariously at my boss’s doorway on the verge of keeling over from stress, she said those life-changing words, “It’s okay, Celine. We’re not saving the world here. Nobody died. It’s okay.”

You could say that was the turning point in my life.

A few months after that episode, I changed careers (serendipitously into one that did, in fact, involve saving the world). And slowly, fashion’s lambskin-gloved hold on me loosened its grip. Before long, I bothered less with keeping up with “it” bags and more with what amazing adventures I could have for the price of a Céline luggage tote.

But you know how addictions are … one little taste and it could be a slippery slope from there. I was assigned to cover the Derek Lam show during Fashion Week, and fashion began to weasel its way back into my veins. I was quite proud of myself as I sat there struggling to stay awake before the show began. I congratulated myself on how much I had evolved from my days of being a slave to fashion. The old me would’ve treated this show like an audience with the Queen, obsessing over my outfit and getting a full 10 hours of sleep so my eyes would be fresh enough to absorb every last stitch. But the new Celine, who has found a life outside of fashion, chose to rock out at a Miami Horror show in Brooklyn Bowl and then stuff herself silly with meatballs before finally going to bed at 4am. I thought I was above it all. Until I spotted Ms. Anna Wintour herself on the front row and I found myself uncontrollably taking picture after picture of her. My inexplicable obsession with the woman manifested itself in dozens of pictures showing her clear as day and the models on the runway, a total blur.

Stalking Anna Wintour: Exhibit A

Bonus points for capturing Ms. Wintour, Garance Doré and Bill Cunningham in one photo!

As it turns out, I still do care about fashion a smidgen. In between my ineffective attempts at runway photography, I gasped over filmy sequined dresses and stared longingly at a particularly lovely pair of multicolored snakeskin wedges. After the show, on my way to catch the 1 train in Columbus Circle, I couldn’t resist joining the style stalkers in snapping a picture of some very chic ladies. But I still get points for having a life because I haven’t got a clue who they are.

Style stalking the fabulous creatures of New York Fashion Week. Does anyone know who they are and why they were being chased down by photographers?

I would be worried that I was heading for a relapse if it wasn’t for my experience at Fashion’s Night Out. FNO is the brainchild of Ms. Wintour, who conjured up the event as a way of resuscitating the retail industry during New York’s 2009 financial meltdown. Every year since then, there’s been one big night out for fashion when store windows come alive with models and celebrities, shop attendants pass out bubbly flutes with the new fall boots, and lines normally seen only outside New York’s hottest clubs form at the doorways of retailers as fashionphiles wait to shop, party and mingle with their favorite famous personalities.

Henri Bendel’s store window, where a platinum blonde model was getting blinged up with sparkly stuff, drew in the Fifth Avenue crowd during Fashion’s Night Out

It was a night full of promise: a mini Hester Street Fair at Henri Bendel hawking bacon marmalade alongside baubles; the possibility of a Justin Beiber sighting at Dolce & Gabbana; and Ben Sherman’s Soho store’s transformation into an old fashioned gentleman’s club. But as we walked down Spring Street pondering what champagne-fueled shenanigans to get into, we found ourselves caught in a screaming crush of Kardashian fans outside their store DASH, where the mere cracking open of a door nearly caused a stampede. As soon as we were out of the rabid crush, my friends and I looked at each other with wide startled eyes and collectively decided to get out of there. “I can pay for my own wine and pizza, thank you very much,” I declared as we fleed the FNO crowd for a lovely trattoria in the West Village.

As I happily gobbled up mozzarella-slathered carbs and washed it all down with vino, I thought, “Yes! Fashion does not have me by the neck. I am still my own person at the end of the day.”

Unless, of course, Ms. Wintour comes into the picture. Every addict has her favorite poison, after all.