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A Day in the Life: Lori Harvey Shares Every Detail Of Her Busy New York Fashion Week

As model Lori Harvey hustles her way through New York Fashion Week, she gives E! News a front row seat to the festivities and explains why eye cream has become her new "best friend."

By Beth Sobol, Sarah Grossbart Sep 16, 2021 1:00 PMTags
Watch: Lori Harvey Shares Her Beauty Secrets to Glowing Skin at NYFW

Some people have jobs so cool we'd actually enjoy attending their marathon Zoom meetings. Even the ones that could totally have been an email. 

Not to say we don't cherish our all-important responsibility of bringing you every last piece of need-to-know information about the casts of Bridgerton and The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, but we don't have our own glam squad or a Rolodex filled with famous names, now do we? 

But the impossibly cool people we'll be profiling in E! News' latest series totally do. Plus access to things like private drivers, designer garb and the type of professional titles we'd drop with wild abandon at parties, dinner dates or while chatting with the barista at Starbucks. Welcome to A Day in the Life...

If New York is truly the city that never sleeps, then Lori Harvey is acclimating quite nicely. In town for the first IRL New York Fashion Week since February 2020, the native Angeleno came prepared to hustle. 

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Every Celebrity at Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2022

"The city's constantly moving, so you fit your meals in where you can," the 24-year-old model explains to E! News of her break-neck NYFW pace. As for sleep, she's lucky if she's squeezing in three hours a night between events, so "eye cream is my best friend while I'm here," she says, "because I'm making sure I don't have bags from running around nonstop."

Good thing she's something of an expert, preparing for the fast-approaching launch of her skincare line, Skin by LH. Which means when she heads back to L.A., there's little time for lounging with her boyfriend of nearly a year, Michael B. Jordan. "I wish," she responds when asked if relaxing was next on her agenda. "I actually have a ton of work to do when I get home."

But first she sketched out 24 hours in her fashion week life for E! News—from the way-too-early wake-up call for her first morning show to the moment she crashed hard following another star-studded bash. 

Conrad Khalil / Tré Thomas / Carrington Harris

7 a.m. (EST) Rise and zhuzh. "I definitely need an alarm—I am still on West Coast time," Lori admits of scheduling wake-up calls through her hotel "because I am definitely somebody who needs the extra help."

Speaking of help, her team is at the ready to prep her for the day, which means there's no time for breakfast. (At least she fits in the morning celery juice she "swears" by.) "When I wake up, I immediately begin getting into glam," she notes of the process that starts with layering on her Skin by LH products. Her other glowing-skin secrets include "loading up" on vitamin C, Pilates and, of course, lots of water. 

Plus there's the excitement of being back in action. "I'm finally getting to see some of my friends getting to model again, so to watch them come down the runway has been fun," raves Lori. "Seeing a lot of new faces, too, it's awesome." Even though sleep deprivation is super on trend, she describes the vibe as "really high energy."

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, she continues, "It's the first fashion week in, like, two years, so I think everybody's just super excited to be here. The designers, being able to show their collections finally in person, have an audience there. I think everybody's having a great time."

Conrad Khalil / Tré Thomas / Carrington Harris

2 p.m. Makeup artist Sean Harris and hair guru Lorenzo Calderon are at the ready for another two hours of glam ahead of Lori's first-ever Coach runway show. "Sitting front row is like getting a first look at the newest, latest fashion trends," Lori raves of the experience. "Getting to see where the designers' heads were at and getting to step into their creative worlds. I love it."

5 p.m. Modeling "a full head-to-toe Coach moment," she says of LBD and color-block puffer, selected with the help of stylist Jason Bolden, Lori arrives at Manhattan's Pier 76, just west of Times Square, and right into a chat with E! News' Zanna Roberts Rossi.

Having heard that the presentation "is going to be full of surprises," she says, "I'm excited to see what we have in store." 

5:30 p.m. Her vantage point from the front row doesn't disappoint. A love letter to the city complete with models on skateboards and stomping alongside a drumline, "There were a lot of new faces," notes Lori. "It was very diverse, so a lot of models you could relate to, like, everyday people, that kind of feel. And it was very youth-driven." 

One of the highlights for her was the giant TV screen installed in the center of it all "which was awesome because you got to see the models coming down on the monitor," she explains. "You got to see things right in front of you, there was a lot of movement. It definitely had a very New York feel to it. It was unlike anything I had seen before."

Conrad Khalil / Tré Thomas / Carrington Harris

Taking it all in, she makes mental notes on her favorite pieces, like "these kind of long jean shorts with boxers that you could see coming over the top which I actually really, really loved and I thought would be super chic," she raves. "I was already putting a look together in my head so I look forward to getting those when the collection drops. Everything honestly had a really New York feel to it. I think it's going to do really well."

Conrad Khalil / Tré Thomas / Carrington Harris

6 p.m. Pumped after such an "incredible experience," she heads back to her hotel for another outfit change. Done up in a green leather REMAIN suit, she indulges in a brief photo shoot for the 'gram. 

10:30 p.m. Then it's off to catch up with pal Saweetie, who's holding court at her MAC Cosmetics bash inside the gilded Boom Boom Room atop the Standard Hotel in NYC's Meatpacking District. "She's the new global ambassador for MAC," says Lori of the rapper. "So I went and stopped by and congratulated her, supported her."

MediaPunch/Shutterstock

1:30 a.m. Exhaustion, but make it fashion. After an 18-and-a-half-hour day, it's finally back to her temporary digs. "By that time I'm really ready to go to sleep," Lori says of forgoing any sort of wind-down routine. "I pretty much pass out because I have to wake up the next day and do it all over again."

Not that she's complaining about sacrificing a bit of beauty sleep. "I am really, really excited to be here," she raves of her whirlwind trip. "There's great energy so it's been really fun."