c'est bonne, c'est fraiche

It pains me to say it: Mom was right. Not as right as she’ll certainly lead you to believe — but right enough that, graded on a curve, she would land immediately at the top of her class.

This will be the only time Melinda McCabe will read this in print, or at least online. (Sure, there are all those Mother’s Day cards, but that is obligatory sentiment, privately expressed.)

Heading to New York for Fashion Week last month reinforced for me most of her witty, yet sometimes ruthlessly sarcastic truths.

Mind your manners

It’s true: There are countless people who never say “please” or “thank you.”

That was never an option in my house — which came in dead handy with those who assigned the empty seats in the minutes before a show at Fashion Week. I went from standing room at Tracy Reese to the second row — right behind stylist-to-the-stars Robert Verdi — thanks to a quick chat riddled with “pleases” once I arrived inside the venue.

Fashionably late

The invitation says the show starts at 2 p.m. In reality, the lights don’t dim for another 30 minutes. As a member of the actual-and-not-oxymoronic working press, rather than a famous A-lister, showing up at the appointed time afforded me better views (Mara Hoffman presentation) and better conversation with my seatmates. Had I not been so early for the Norman Ambrose show, I wouldn’t have met fellow Michigan native Melissa Butler, who is launching her own all-natural lipstick line called the Lip Bar.

Be nice, but not Minnesota nice

It’s a bit of a shock when you first notice the similarities you share with your mother.

Mine talks to everyone. Especially if they have a golden retriever.

Imagine my surprise when I fell into social lockstep with her when I recognized a woman from the tents from a previous day. Since fashion reporter Vevlyn Wright stood at the very same Upper East Side bus stop as me, I had a captive audience as I was desperate to talk to someone. (Reporters are generally a chatty bunch; fashion writers, though, not so much.) Thankfully, she didn’t think I was a stalker, so she offered invaluable advice and assistance for the rest of the week.

Someone always has more

The Cannes Film Festival is certainly one place on earth where that fact slaps you in the face, the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations another.

But during Fashion Week, our capitalist society morphs into an episode of “Downtown Abbey.” There are the Haves. And then there are the people like me.

Since I secured a press pass, I thought that was my ticket to the fashion kingdom. Invitations would flood my mailbox, I’d share the karaoke microphone with Karl Lagerfeld at Carine Roitfeld’s after party and Heidi Klum herself would extend an invitation to the “Project Runway” season nine fashion show finale.

Wrong on all counts.

As my mother constantly reminded me throughout my high school years — there is always someone who is more successful, more beautiful or has more money than me.

I’m here to tell you that they also get the better seats.

And who’s looking at you?

As a high schooler, I was deeply chagrined and marginalized because I had JC Penney’s Hunt Club logo polo shirts, not Ralph Lauren’s, in my closet. Perhaps that’s how my label obsession began.

“I don’t care if it’s spun from gold, I’m not spending $75 dollars on a sweater,” Mom famously said. Many times.

She had a point.

Remember shopping for patterns at the fabric store with your mom? And how she could tell you how the garment was going to look, down to its finest detail and all you had was that line drawing on the back, the ugly picture on the front and a bolt of fabric? And you wondered: How the heck is she going to do this? How is this going to turn into that and not be a hideous mess?

Why didn’t I realize that when my mother sewed for me, she was truly a designer in her own right? And that wearing an original shows better taste than sporting the mass-produced Esprit schlock that I had to have?

And who’s looking at you?, part II

Since street-style photography sells, photographers descend on NYC and photograph everyone. Well almost everyone. Here’s what I experienced daily: Gaggle of photographers shooting stylish, fashionable people walking in front of me.

As I approached? Cameras dropped to down position.

That’s not to say no one took my picture. There was the one gal who preposterously wanted to know who did my nose. And promptly took about 17 angles of my never-touched-by-elective-surgery beak. So there’s that.

Some other insights gleaned from a week on the Big Apple Beat:

Remember the “walk of shame” from college? There’s a fashion week version: trying to get a ticket to a show when you’re not assigned. Yep, that humiliating slinking away without the coveted scannable barcode. Thanks for the memories, Derek Lam. But, thanks to his rejection, I now own a great pair of booties from Matt Bernson, courtesy of Olive and Bettes. At the online store, they are known as the Basile Blade. In my closet, they are known as my I-got-bounced-from-Derek-Lam’s-show consolation prize.

Buyers have a vision I do not possess. Hey, it took me five years to buy a couch and that nearly killed me. I certainly could not shoulder the responsibility of dressing the North Shore. I can dress myself, though that can be challenging; I absolutely could not dress clients. My eternal awe goes out to people such as Laura Schoch and Ellen Stirling, who routinely pick winners for the ladies who frequent their shops.

Why has this turned into a referendum on growing up under the tutelage of my mother? Maybe it’s because when I was growing up, the world for an independent, sartorial sage such as Oak Park’s Tavi Gevinson did not exist. No teen in her right mind would push fashion limits for fear of endless abuse and bullying. Coming under fire for your sartorial choices leaves indelible, although invisible, scars. Fitting in was survival.

Now, maybe not so much.

Which is what brought me to New York City to cover fashion week. A bit of overcoming the 17-year-old fashion victim in my psyche, but mainly to see how the runway shapes or otherwise fashions what we see, and ultimately buy, in our local boutiques.

I left home for good in 1996. But, somehow, amazingly, my mother followed me to New York in 2011.

Mom, don’t rub it in, or you can forget the Mother’s Day card in May.