Perth Fashion Festival continues...

Perth Fashion Festival entries continue…

Sunday September 6 was yet another very bust day at Fashion Paramount. Two shows were on that night and these were the inaugural Student Runway and the highly anticipated and publicised Wheels & Dollbaby. Due to having two shoes on that night there was a lot of preparation to be done in the day.

The Student Runway show was inspired by the popular television show Project Runway. Design students were asked by the lectures to enter a piece from their body of work that would fall into one of the following categories:
- Ready-to-Wear Women’s
- Ready-to-Wear Men’s
- Contemporary Eveningwear
- Eco Design
- Costume Couture

The structure of the parade was to follow that of Project Runway where the clothes would be shown in a parade and then on the models final walk the emcees would ask the panel of judges for a few words on each garment. The finalist would then be announced with the student who had designed the garment coming down onto the runway. This as I mentioned was the intended structure of that show. This unfortunately didn’t happen in the first category as the emcees for got to ask the judging panel for their thought and then forgot to announce the finalist of the Ready-to-Wear Women’s. However due to this being a live event mistakes are common and we just have to learn from these mistakes for future events. This problem was corrected and the show then proceeded with only a few minimal mistakes.

The most challenging part of the Student Runway part was that no designers/students were allowed backstage so we had to rely on our knowledge from the fittings and the pictures which accompanied garment instructions for the dressers. Some of the pieces were very intricate and we had to do our best to present the students work they way they intended it to be worn. The final dress of the even was the most challenging outfit of the evening and perhaps the whole festival. It was a piece in the Costume Couture by a student from Fremantle called Graham Hall. The face of the festival Emily was to wear the dress. I got given the task of getting Emily into this dress and with the designers assistant being given permission to come back stage to help it took us 20mins to get her into the dress. If anyone has seen the dress they could possibly understand the huge job that it is. It took three people to help Emily get onto the catwalk as the dress was so long and wide she wasn’t able to do it herself. Here is a photo of Emily all dressed including her crown, mask, collar, gloves and all 200m of tulle that make up the petticoat of this gigantic dress! (Photo courtesy of Style Voyeur)

So after all the stress and excitement of the Student Runway it was time for a quick back up and time for the new model sheets to go up and new running order as we needed to get ready for the Wheels show and only had limited time but as this is fashion we knew we would have some time to play with as a show never starts on time! So once the entire student runway collection pieces were put away safely (including shoes) it was out with the sexy and sensual Wheels racks.
Although Wheels was a stand alone show it was extremely calm and run smoothly from our backstage area. All fittings had been done and shoes were all ready to go (thankfully the girls wore the same shoes as they all had 3 changes). Once we got the girls out of hair and makeup it was into first outfits and then the wait began. The show was late as expected but never the less it was still good fun! We had a lot of media allowed backstage for this show due to the high anticipation that goes with a Wheels and DollBaby show. Unlike the previous nights there was a live band that performed while the girls walked down the catwalk. This added a new element to the show and completely complemented Fashion Paramounts urban atmosphere.

I particularly enjoyed this show due to the fact that I had been involved with a few of the elements of the Wheels and Dollbaby show from running from printer to printer on Railway Parade in Subiaco at 5pm looking for the printers that had the Wheels invitation so that they were able to be approved to assisting the project manager with various elements of the show. On the Sunday of the show I was luck enough to deal with the design assistant for Wheels & Dollbaby and not only do the fittings with the girls but actually assign all the outfits to the girls myself. This was really exciting and a great opportunity to represent the Perth fashion Festival. I felt relieved when the show was over as that the Wheels and DollBaby show is such an important one for the festival and it is great to have the label launch their new season in Perth instead of Sydney where their flagship store is located.

Until next post….have a good day!