Fashion Week – Behind the Scenes

February 25, 2009

As many of you know, I have been the backstage supervisor at fashion shows for 22 years now.  A friend of mine, Audrey Smaltz, started out as a model and saw a need for fashion show production; pre-production; professional dressers, pressers, tailors; hair and make-up artists, and everything else that goes into the making of a fashion show, whether in the designer’s showroom, a rented space, or, as has been the case in the last ten years or so, in the tents in Bryant Park in back of the New York Public Library.  While I do get paid for it, I’d do it for free, I enjoy it so much.

There is an energy I’ve never found anywhere else, and since there is only one chance to get it right, every little detail is critical.   Those of you who have listened to the audio product Dan Kennedy and I put together (XXX-Rated Sales Strategies), who have read my first book, Mayflower Madam, or who have engaged my consulting services, know how extremely detail oriented I am!   So it is a perfect fit.

As I mentioned in my newsletter (Sales Savvy, Issue #7), the number of shows this year was way way down, and the overall mood (from the design side as well as the audience) was decidedly “apprehensive” this season.  But that doesn’t mean there weren’t beautiful clothes, glamorous celebrities, and lots and lots of beautiful models!

Because of all the press I’m still doing for the book (Uncensored Sales Strategies, co-authored with Dan Kennedy)  I cut way back this year and only did four shows.  Saturday the 14th, the call time for LaCoste was 6:30AM.  It may be fun but it still is a job!  While LaCoste may be best known for those alligator shirts, they also have a pretty extensive line of sportswear as well as a pretty sizable budget.   They had 72 models (55 girl and 17 boys) walking the show, probably 75% of whom only had one look.  Our primary responsibility is getting them dressed and accessorized as specified on each model’s look card, and changing them into their second (or third) look as the show progresses.  Our second biggest resonsibility is making sure that the clothes are perfectly pressed with absolutely no wrinkles and no lint.  The lint part is fairly easy, but trying to keep the models from sitting down, bending over or doing all the other things they manage to come up with to make wrinkles, is very challenging!

So there are a lot of people backstage to oversee, and many of the models do not speak English, or it is sketchy, and many are very young (teenagers).  After the show is over, we get everyone undressed, hang up and pack up all the clothes, consolidate all the garment bags on the designers own racks, and then their team takes it from there.

Tuesday the 17th was designer, Cynthia Steffe, who designs clothes primarily for dinner or an evening out.  They are stylish, only a few are super sexy, and she uses unusual fabrications, which is what make her clothes so distinctive.   There were only 22 models for this show, which is fairly typical.  Everyone had two looks and a few girls had three.

What is fun is to watch is what the models do as they exit the runway.  There they are, doing their model walk down the runway and back, but the second they get backstage and out of sight, all of a sudden they begin to make a mad dash (skitter is more like it, due to their high heels) to their rack, undoing their buttons or belts as they run, in order to change into their next oufit.  The dressers swarm around them, with two on the floor undoing their shoes, one in the back undoing the zipper, another in front undoing the buttons.  The model stands there with her arms in the air as one or two dressers lift her dress or top over her head, using a head scarf so as not to get makeup on the clothes, while  another dresser is pulling down her skirt or pants.  If it is a really fast change, the clothes just get flung onto the floor and are hung up later.

Once she is undressed, the team goes into action to get her into her next look.  Helping her get her arms through the sleeves and her head through the neck (again, all without getting makeup on the clothes), holding the skirt or pants so she can step into them and then doing them up, getting her into her shoes and buckling them for her, putting on the jewelry, the hat, the gloves, making sure she has her sunglasses and handbag and whatever else goes with that particular look.  Take one last look at the look card to make sure she has all the pieces and that everything is tucked in or done up exactly the way it is in the polaroid on the card.

The entire change can take as little as two minutes or as long as four – we have to work fast because there isn’t much time.  Then she gets back in line, does her bit, and is back for the next change.  Most shows don’t last much longer than 10-15 minutes, and as I said before, there is only one chance to get it right.

In a few days I’ll write about the Michael Kors and L’Wren Scott shows, so y’all come back now!

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