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A Fashion Week Bat Mitzvah Video Shoot

Stylish Westchester preteens steal the show from Marc Jacobs

by
Stephanie Butnick
September 16, 2014
A model presents a creation by the Marc Jacobs Spring/Summer 2015 collection during New York Fashion Week September 11, 2014 in New York. (Joshua LOTT/AFP/Getty Images)
A model presents a creation by the Marc Jacobs Spring/Summer 2015 collection during New York Fashion Week September 11, 2014 in New York. (Joshua LOTT/AFP/Getty Images)

New York magazine’s The Cut set out to uncover the identities of the pint-size preteens who captured the attention of the crowd outside the Marc Jacobs show Friday during Fashion Week while being filmed by a videographer. It turns out the gaggle of tweens were from Westchester, and were filming a video for pal Chloe Cornell’s bat mitzvah. Her mom picked everyone up after school and brought them to Manhattan for the shoot.

Clad in shirts bearing the Chanel logo—in this case repurposed to stand for ‘Chloe Cornell’—with similarly adorned hats and black sunglasses, the fashion-forward group is the latest entry in the canon of high production bat mitzvah videos, a trend which has some asking whether bat mitzvahs have become too glitzy.

Here’s what Chloe, who is designing her own bat mitzvah dress, told The Cut about their after-school outing.

Tell me about what you were doing outside of the Marc Jacobs show.



It’s was a video shoot for [the] montage for my entry video before I walk into my bat mitzvah. It’s going to play and everyone is going to see it.



Was there a script?



All my friends were pretending to be my fashion followers. They’re wearing all my clothes, and I was supposed to be the fashion designer. They were outside the Marc Jacobs show, pretending they were waiting outside for my show. My videographer person was telling them a script to say that was related to my bat mitzvah and the fashion show, so it would work for both. They were like, I’m so excited! and all this stuff.

Chloe is also bringing her fashion interest into her bat mitzvah project—she’s designing t-shirts to sell that will raise money for an anti-bullying charity.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.