Why are February and September the best months out of the entire year? Because that’s when New York Fashion Week (NYFW) is held. This year, NYFW lasted 10 days, September 3-11. Fashion designers from all over the world come to NYC to showcase their spring and summer 2015 (SS15) collections to potential buyers, press and the general public. Although some fashion shows do allow general public to purchase tickets to their shows, most of the time these shows are invite only consisting of VIPs, celebrities, press and typically close friends of the designer that is showcasing their new collection.
This year for the September showing, I had the privilege of working for Korean designer, Yuna Yang, who showed her SS15 collection on Thursday evening. Upon arriving at the Yuna Yang office in NYC early Thursday morning, I immediately got to work helping with the seating arrangements of the guests who had previously RSVPd to the event. The seating arrangement is in fact a pivotal part of the show. Typically, the VIPs, celebrities and magazine reps get the ever so coveted front row seats. Each seat at the show is carefully calculated and thought out as to who will sit there, hoping to eliminate any discrepancies.
Before leaving the office to set up for the show at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, I had one last job to do: dressing two celebrity fashion bloggers, which I have to say was definitely one of the major highlights of my day. Often times, celebrities will wear the designers clothes to the shows to promote the designer, and depending on who is wearing the clothes, the value of the garments may go up even more. For example, big name fashion powerhouses such as Dior will actually pay celebrities to wear their gowns to red carpet events. Every big name designer fights for his or her designs to be worn by A-listers at major events.
When it came time for the fashion show to start, my job was to stay backstage and dress the models. Each dresser was given three models to dress throughout the show and every model had three different looks to show; for a total of nine looks that I was in charge of dressing the models for. The fashion show went off without a hitch and the designer was extremely pleased with how everything turned out; but that’s not to say that backstage wasn’t a crazy mass of chaos filled with dressers, photographers and hair and makeup people during the show.
Sadly, NYFW is over for me for this year. Hopefully I’ll see you in the spring NYC for the FW15 collections!
Photo by Katie Wall
