Fashion Week Experience

Over two separate weekends this November I gained work experience at The Indian Fashion Week London and The National Asian Wedding Show London at The Olympia, and Pakistan Fashion Week London at The Park Lane Hilton.

I started this experience by applying for an ad for volunteer backstage assistants at The Indian Fashion Week London on the 11th and 12th November. After sending off my cover letter, CV and details, it took no longer than 2 hours to get a reply with my acceptance. Then I booked my National Express bus to London and sorted out accommodation. When the weekend came I got my bus to Victoria Station on the Friday afternoon, giving myself enough time to go see a West End play before bed. I saw A Comedy About A Bank Robbery and I would recommend this show to anyone who finds anything funny; I was laughing my little socks off. The morning arrived of the first day, I got up at 6 to get ready, feeling the pressure of a fashion week to look nice, headed to my tube and got to the Olympia for around 8 am. I then grabbed breakfast at a Pret a Manger across the road. When 9 O'clock rolled around I headed over to the Olympia, I was so nervous. Entering the building was amazing, the main hall set up with many stalls advertising their wedding goods, be it photography, wedding dress, musicians, cake and catering, honeymoon organisers. It all look luxurious. We were then lead to the second floor, to the back stage of the runway. Rail upon rail of amazing garments, so many of them hand embroidered and embellished. We were then directed to the steamers where we continued to steam all of the garments; this turns out to be just like a vertical, more efficient iron, who knew. This job took us a while, as many of the garments were very heavy but also had many layers, a lot of them being visible and so needing a steam. The first show was planned to begin around 12 30pm, and so around 11 30am we were introduced to our model who we would be dressing. My model was gorgeous as expected and had plenty of experience so helped me a lot in knowing what and how to do things. When it actually came to the shows, boy was it stressful. Because the dresses and garments were so heavy it was almost impossible to get on and off swiftly and so many of the

garments took two people to get on. The models had to be ready at least 2 minutes before they were needed on the stage so they could be styled with jewellery and head pieces; this gave us very little time to get them dressed. But my model never missed a

slot, cause I would've cried if she had. There were 4 separate shows that day, two fashion week and two wedding show. This meant we finished around 7 30pm. However throughout this first day, a woman called Anita kept asking me to return to London in a couple weeks time to assist with the Pakistan Fashion Week because she liked my work ethic, and she asked me to check my availability and to get back to her on Sunday. Once the shows had finished on the Saturday, we had tidied up the clothes and prepared for tomorrow, me and my friend Imini went out into London for a wander and for some dinner. We headed to Oxford Street and wandered around there for a good hour or so, then we headed to South Bank to grab some food, we ended up in this under the bridge restaurant, it was pretty cool, before heading back to our accommodation to rest up for the following day. The following day went very similarly, getting up far too early for my liking, Pret a Manger breakfast, steaming, dressing and undressing my model. Anita approached me again today and gave me her phone number so I could contact her about Pakistan Fashion Week. After that day we headed to TGI Fridays for dinner before heading to Victoria Station to get my bus back to Nottingham.

Two weeks later I am heading back to London to work backstage at Pakistan Fashion Week London. This time I was nowhere near as nervous and was ready to hit this weekend running. I arrived at the Park Lane Hilton at 9, ready to get to work. As I headed to the rooms I was directed to, I found some people to help me, who then turned out to be the creative director of the event. (who btw said I should be modelling, and put me as a stand by model..!!!)

I arrived on time, yet I was earlier than many people, this I feel gave me an edge, being able to get to work straight away. Once again I was steaming the garments and organising the racks. We worked a lot closer with the designers this time, which was really interesting, helping them put pieces together, them asking my opinion on garments and what would go well with what, I felt a lot more involved somehow. Having worked with Anita before, she knew how I worked and so used me a lot, almost as assistant; I was with her a lot of the day, doing odd jobs for her, mixing it up from just steaming. This fashion week only included 2 shows a day and so was a lot less stressful. We had more time to talk to the models and socialise with the other creatives working; giving me more of an insight into the world of Asian fashion. Many of the dresses, like Indian Fashion week, were heavily embroidered and embellished, however there was more variety with styles of clothing, many being a lot more casual than I had expected. This whole weekend was a lot smoother and organised. I made many contacts over this weekend, which will hopefully lead to more work experience in the future.

I really enjoyed these two weekends. I found the rush and busyness of it all extremely exciting and inspiring; it was the sort of stress and fatigue at the end of the day which is rewarding. I loved seeing it all come together, and being able to see the ins and outs of fashion shows. Having only ever watched them through a screen, you don't understand how manic it is backstage, and so having experienced this, I am much more appreciative of all the shows and how much work goes into everything. The days were very long and full on but satisfying; the pace reminded me of work experience I have had on location in the costume department of the television industry (BBC and Drama Republic), and how much you can fit into a day. Coming back to Nottingham again felt extremely mundane and slow. But these two weekends have been very interesting and have definitely given me a new view on fashion weeks.

Ta Ta for now, My Lovelies.

Miss Blue.