Friday evening, Jess and I drove out to Randall’s Island, the little patch under the Triborough bridge that houses the Manhattan Psychiatric Center and the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center for the criminally insane. This past weekend, appropriately enough, it also housed Frieze, New York’s largest contemporary art fair.

For three days, nearly 200 galleries from around the world set up shop in a long, serpentine, tent-like building, displaying their priciest, most inscrutable pieces on white pop-up gallery walls. A few of the pieces were spectacular (we coveted a pair of large Alex Katz’s in particular), and a handful were disturbing, thought-provoking or funny in memorable ways.

But, by and large, the art was eclipsed by the crowd. Collect the arterati from New York, Berlin, Tokyo and beyond, and you have an amazing array of people all trying their hardest to look like they’re not trying hard at all. The ennui was palpable, and I spent most of the time with the Ben Folds Five’s Battle of Who Could Care Less stuck in my head. “Do you not hear me anymore / I know it’s cool to be so bored / I know it’s not your thing to care.”

Jess spent most of the time marveling at the clothing worn, most of it a far throw from the carefully-proscribed strictures of Fashion Week cool that she’s used to seeing. The dominant Frieze style appeared to be “expensive basics assembled mismatchingly by blind drunk”, though at least a few people also seemed to be wearing stuff pulled from Zoolander’s Derelicte.

Then, of course, there were the Milanese and Roman galleries, instead full of young men wearing impeccable suits with sprezzatura. Proving, as ever, that an excellent suit is never out of place. Or, at least, that we should all wish we were Italian.