Dress Up

Working Backstage at a Fashion Show

The Venue

My Dresser Tag

My Rail

The Model I Dressed

After I finished the lights lit up London with a view of the Gherkin 

I worked at my universities Graduate Fashion Show this was the first internal show that the university has organised to showcase all the collections of each Fashion Ba(Hons) graduate as usually there are only about 20 students picked to showcase their collection at Graduate Fashion Week. This was a great opportunity for the student to organise their own fashion show and have control of the venue, participants and who could come to the show I volunteered as a dresser as I felt that it would provide great experience for me in preparation for London Fashion Week. 

The day started with an early afternoon tube ride over to Shoreditch and I explored the Mac store as I am a self confessed beauty product junkie and picked up a 217 brush which should be a staple in every make up bag. The venue was Christ Church in Spitalfields I put a picture of the venue in the above photos it was absolutely beautiful as the chandeliers lit up the room everyone who was working had a go of mimicking a walk down the catwalk.  The crew began to arrive and we helped unload all of the collections into the backstage area then hair and make up team arrived and set up as I lingered over them spotting which products they were using, we all had a debriefing and then organised each dresser a card with the model we'd be dressing and sorted out the outfits to the dressers. I had 10 outfits to dress all from different collections and each with their own specific requirement from the designer on how to style them, next the models arrived to be put in hair and make up. 

We began the practice run of the show which started by quickly organising the shoes and accessories under the outfits and we dressed our model in the first outfit thankfully I had a really professional model who helped undress and dress herself quickly and worked well with me - I found that providing her with a cup of water and a seat for when she had long breaks helped keep her in a good mood. We didn't have enough time to finish the practice run so we had to put the models back into hair and make up then everyone started to arrive and the designers gave the dressers extra notes on what to do for the real run. 

I had a 20 minute break before we had to dress our models in their first outfits and the madness began we were told to keep the noise down as before there was too many people shouting so there was lots of rustling about and hand signals getting the models ready in time to be sent down the catwalk in time. Although the entire day was crazy with lots of rushing about and having to remember lots of important details I loved it and would definitely recommend helping out in a fashion show to anyone who's interested in the fashion industry the end pay off is so good to see all the designers happy and relaxed after months of stress to create these beautiful garments.