Fast as lightning . . .

.... that is how fast time has gone over the last 10 days.

 

Two of us interns and the sponsor wall!

 

The Telstra Perth Fashion Festival 2014 began last Wednesday, September 17th and finished with a bang on Monday September 22nd. I was going to post a blog in the middle of the festival but time is an elusive concept when you're busy. When you're working an event a good nights sleep becomes a thing of myth. I was in the office at 9 or 10am every morning and finishing at the venue at about 11pm every night.

 

The issues that arose over the week were innumerable, yet everyone was on the ball problem solving, and only a few arising issues ever actually became major problems. There were also one or two possible full blown crisis that never came to pass. THANK GOD! There were also some difficult people, but when aren't there really? Overall I have to say that the whole even ran smoothly. Talking to the staff at TPFF who have worked one or more festivals before this year was interesting, considering I thought this year was fantastic. They were concerned about us first timers and the experience that we had, as they believed that this year was "absolutely manic". Below I have tried, to the best of my increasingly dimming memory, to create a brief timeline of events over the 6 days of the festival.

 

On the way to the city the morning before the festival opened, I heard on the radio that one of the designers from opening night criticized Perth's models hip size. All I could think was what a nightmare this was going to be. Fortunately I have enough of a brain and training to know that this was possibly taken out of context, and people had blown this out of proportion. I was right. Opening night was showing two designers who  design couture in Asia, and a Perth designer Alvin Fernandez of Ae'lkemi. Michael Cinco normally designs for the Asian body shape which is considerably slimmer than the normal Australian model. Thus his gowns, that were bought to Australian pre-made to a certain size and shape, had to fit on the models provided for the show.

 

a Michael Cinco creation, courtesy of the Perth Fashion Festival Facebook page & Stefan Gosatti

 

The first day of the festival, going in to the office, I had no idea what to expect. I was thrown into the deep end fixing media tickets and seating charts. Certain publications couldn't sit together, certain people requested to sit with each other and other people who we had seated in the front row had pulled out at the last minute. I had to get one of the other interns to check the envelopes to make sure the right ticket for the correct seats were in the envelope with the right name. I was cross-eyed by the end of it.

 

The night times were much the same, do not let anyone backstage who didn't have a backstage pass, do not give out back stage passes without express permission from the BOH manager (one of the PR girls), media do not interview without permission from the PR girls, and one of them has to be present. People turned up without their media passes, media turned up who did not RSVP for the night and we either had to turn them away or scramble to find seats. Often there were no seats to be found. One media delegate told me another member of their publication was not coming so her ticket was reallocated, then the person in question showed up. Very confusing! Fortunately everyone left happy at the end of the night, and we seated everyone 99.9% of the time.

 

Two of us interns with our BOH passes

 

 

The highlight of the week would have definitely been Ascot. The Ruth Tarvydas tribute show as well as Galvanised showed at Ascot of Friday night. Logistically it was a nightmare, preventing people getting into places that they weren't supposed to be in was a lot harder and on top of that the volunteer roster was wrong, so set up took longer than expected. But everyone who was at Ascot for set up pulled together and got everything done. By the time people started to arrive at 4:30/5pm we were pretty much ready. Certain media arrived early for a pre-arranged interview with Rebecca Judd, other media got their early to try and get one. As Rebecca was walking the runway that night her time was short. I was lucky enough to be shadowing the PR girls that day so I got a glimpse at everything. For the record, the high light of the night for me was when one of the models ate one of the cheeseburgers I bought for the staff!

 

Prepping the purple carpet for Ascot

 

 

The shows during the day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday were great. Saturday was so hot I had to send a volunteer home with heat stroke after making him drink a PowerAde and a bottle of water. I also had to get water and PowerAde for a few of the media in the Fashion Central Marquee because it was so hot, even with the air-conditioner going! It was on Saturday, during the Telstra show that Samantha Jade performed for the crowd, everyone wanted to interview her, but unfortunately as we weren't the ones who bought her to Perth, Target was, it wasn't up to us which interviews she took. Fortunately we managed to organised two interviews with the assistance of the team from Target.

 

View of Fashion Central from the TPFF office

The most eye opening issue that popped up involved the face of TPFF 2014, Caitlin Lomax. She is one of the nicest people I have met, she is gorgeous (obviously) and has a great body. She's not unhealthily skinny, she just is. As Bec Judd didn't want to wear "that red dress" during the Tarvydas tribute show, the honour fell to Caitlin Lomax. and she pulled it off stunningly. Yet one woman took to one of the TPFF's Instagram photo's of the moment to vent her dissatisfaction in a rather catty and hurtful way. Instead of TPFF responding, we simply reported the comments and they were deleted. I think that was the most responsible way to handle the situation, or it could have gotten very messy.

 

Although technically my 20 days are now up, I am staying on once a week to help out with the preparation and PR for some other festival related events of the next month or two. I still have one more Blog to complete so hopefully I have some more interesting news for you!

 

Interns in the office! Last day of TPFF2014

 

 

Until then....

Ashlyn out! xo