‘She’s in the wrong outfit!!’
5 words you never want to hear working backstage at a fashion show.
But we’ll come back to that.
Thursday at LMFF saw me attend the Marketing Breakfast before heading to the Malvern Town Hall just after midday to work on the Fashion Collections Show, Renegades. Scheduled for 10pm, the Renegades show is the latest event on the LMFF schedule and features From Britten; Vanguard; Luela; Stevie; Twichett & Tonge; Chocolate City and Rufus Green. The Malvern Town Hall had played host to the Mini Me parade just hours earlier so once the kids cleared out, we moved in, ready for a full on afternoon of fashion.
I was again working with Head Dresser Virginia who had poached me from the Vogue girls earlier in the week. As an assistant to the Head Dresser no uniform was required (yay!) and I was looking forward to this shift now that my official role was cemented. As is the way of a fashion show, no shoes had been taped, spec sheets that should have been completed at fittings were not filled in and shoes and accessories had not yet been allocated by the Stylist. The hours lay before us and much work had to be done.
I taped shoes for hours before writing spec sheets out. I helped rearrange the room into model order rather than designer order. We checked outfits had shoes, jewellery, purses and listened to the designers specify exactly how they wanted the outfits to go out. The hours flew by and before we even had time to panic it was 7.30pm and time for a dress rehearsal. As an assistant it was my job to float between volunteer dresses, assisting with difficult shoes and buttons where required. Lot’s of the volunteers at the Renegades show were new to dressing (Fashion Collections is where volunteers are broken in (so to speak) while more experienced volunteers work on the L’Oreal Paris Runway shoes at Central Pier) and needed lot’s of assistance, one in particular was so nervous I decided it would be more beneficial to work with him alone than to be all over the place assisting here and there.
Our dress rehearsal went surprisingly well, there were some very tight changes in this particular show (basically, anything less that 12 is a quick change and we had some that were 8 in this show, about 30 or 40 seconds to get your model into the next outfit and have them back on the catwalk looking fab!). By 8pm we were finalising shoes and accessories, steaming clothes and taping last minute shoes. Dinner arrived (pasta – I had rice crackers!) and we had time for a quick break before stress levels started to rise (as well as voices) and the anticipation set in.
At 10pm, we were still at least 30 minutes from show time. It’s not unusual to run late (hence, fashionably late) but 30 minutes is a bit much, especially for a show that was starting to late to begin with. We steamed the last minute outfits, took a deep breath and waited. And waited. Apparently some VIPs had gotten caught up coming out to Malvern from the Runway shows at Central Pier and the show couldn’t begin without them. The starting gun fired close to 10.45pm and we were away. Names were called across the room, shoes flew, clothes’ sat in discarded piles on the floor. Then, the unthinkable: ‘She’s in the wrong outfit!!’
In the mayhem leading up to the parade, spec sheets had not been numbered in model order, simply placed on racks in designer order. During the steaming process, two outfits had been placed back on our rack back to front, meaning we had put our model in her 4th outfit when she should have been in the third. Fuck. They threw the jacket for outfit 4 over outfit 3 and ran for the door. As it turned out, the model got changed into the correct outfit at the door (she had about 1 minute 30 secs for this particular change) and was only missing earrings – which I am sure no one in the audience would have known anyway.
The rest of the show ran smoothly and overall was a success besides the backstage dramas. My nervous volunteer was panicking, but as I assured him, the model ended up walking in the right outfit anyway, tomorrow she wouldn’t care (or probably even remember) and everything, really, was fine. If anything, it was a great lesson to learn on your first time dressing because it was an error that would never happen again on his watch (or mine for that matter!)
Within half an hour of the show finishing the room was upended, repacking shoes (and untaping them!), bagging up clothes and packing all the accessories away. By 12.30am the backstage team were sitting outside enjoying a glass of wine and a cigarette (don’t worry Mum, I still breathe the clean air) and hailing another successful day at LMFF. I got home around 1.30am and fell into bed, getting some beauty sleep before another day of fun, fashion and frivolity – festival Friday.
Image One: Shoes ready to be unboxed and taped
Image Two: Model and Designer Running Sheets for the show
Image Three: Model Luke takes a rest before the show
