When I arrived, the fitting, hair, and makeup were all happening in a room off to the right of the entrance, which was windowed on all sides. Shortly after, someone from the venue came in and said, "Actually, everyone needs to move out of this room and into another room upstairs."
That meant not only packing up everything that had already been set up, but while transporting into the next room, we also discovered said room was actually a theatre, and the hair and makeup people then had to scramble to find outlets. Utter chaos.
It ended up working decently well, but the venue employees were also doing a tech check for the premiere later, meaning at some point they turned out the lights. While the hair and makeup people were still doing hair and makeup. So then they were trying to yell "LICHT!!!!!" (light in german) over the sound of the cinema audio playing. Again, utter chaos.
We were originally told that the doors would open at 6pm and the fashion show would be at 7pm. No one gave us a "be ready by this time," so I just assumed we'd have to be finished with hair and makeup by 6pm.
At 5:12pm, there were still two girls in front of me in line for makeup, so I just decided to do my own (I always bring my own makeup in case of such a situation). I was satisfied with how my makeup came out, but as it turned out, I probably would have had time to just wait in line to have it done, because the show actually wasn't until 8pm. And who knows if that's when it actually started, because by then I had neither my phone nor my apple watch on me.
When we started the show, it seemed like no one had any idea there was a fashion show occurring. And indeed, it seems that was the case. After the event I saw footage of the pre-show announcement: two soft-spoken women yelling to a crowded room of people, over music, that "HEY! FASHION SHOW STARTING!" Obsessed.
Before a show, there is usually a rehearsal, where we learn the "choreography" of the show—where we walk and when. Naturally, there's almost no one else in the space when we rehearse.
However, during the show itself, since for this show there wasn't an officially demarcated runway (we were just walking a specific route down the stairs and through the lobby of the venue), there were people everywhere.
As in, we were literally wading through the crowd just to walk our route. And as I said, people had no idea a show was occurring at all, so they'd walk out in front of us, block our path, and almost hit us with the door as they came out of the bathroom (can't really blame them, but that was quite funny).
Before you enter the runway, you usually can't see anything, and thus need someone cueing when the next model should start walking. In the shows I have done, this is typically either someone right next to the model receiving some kind of cue from someone else (via phone or video), or someone inconspicuously placed so that the model can receive visual cues from them but the person themself is unobtrusive to the audience—though now that that I think about it, there have been several times when the cue person was obtrusive to the audience, and was in every photo. Lol.
Anyway, at this particular show, the cue person said, "Ok, when it's time for the next model to go, I'm going to whistle very loudly." ... Yeah, that didn't work too well. After the first few whistles, they opted to figure out how to do visual cues instead, and it ended up working alright.
The basic template for a runway show: each person walks the runway on their own (or in twos or whatever), then at the end, everyone goes out walking in a line as the finale, then everyone either stays on the runway as the designer comes out and bows, or everyone goes straight offstage after the finale.
For this show, we only rehearsed/discussed the first part—no mention of if we'd do a finale or not, and if so, how. Usually this is no big deal, because if you've done one finale, you've done them all. But this show already had a weird route, and people all over the route, and everyone was thrown off. In addition to the fact that we didn't really have an official "backstage" where we could go off the runway and coordinate; we were in the throes of the crowd the whole time.
But most of us assumed there would be a finale, so we stayed around and stayed in line. However, since we hadn't communicated how it would go, many of the models ended up posing individually again at the bottom of the runway, instead of continuing in a fluid finale line. So then...it ended up almost like just running through the show a second time. No one knew what was going on.
Then we got stuck at the back loop of the runway route, because the models at the front of the finale line didn't want to get in the way of the individual posing that was happening at the front. Then when we finally got through and started heading back up the stairs, someone yelled out for us to come back down for a group photo. They finished the group photo by the time we made it back down the stairs, so we headed back up the stairs. But then someone shouted out to actually come back down again, because we were going to go into the front room for more group photos. Which then took several minutes to get there, because now that the show was over, the crowd had dispersed even more, blocking our way to the room.
We took photos and photos and more photos. I and another model slowly backed out of the room so we could go back upstairs to change. We managed to make our way back up, only to find that the theatre was actually full of people about to watch the film. We were on the balcony, so it didn't matter too much, but the designer's assignments met me and immediately started undressing me, only to realize that we were in plain view of anyone who happened to turn around. They let me quickly grab my clothes, then covered me a tiny bit more while I changed, but I was still just changing out in the open.
I finally changed and gathered my stuff, exiting the venue and began walking home. I was on cloud nine. Despite all the mishaps, it was a great show, and I was happy with my performance. I eagerly opened my camera roll to see photos from the show...but all I had were the crappy photos and single walking video I had taken prior to the show started.
Of course. I had forgotten this unfortunate truth: if you don't manage to have someone you know attending the show (this one sold out before my boyfriend could get a ticket), then despite the insane amount of photos and videos being taken at the event, you'll leave without a single one.
So once I got home, the real work began: scouring Instagram for any mention of the event, hoping for a glimpse of myself in the show. And after a few hours of searching, I was successful! I got a really great video of my portion of the show. And since then I've gotten even more, though I have still yet to see any professional photos—though I did add some of the photographers on Instagram and will message them in a few days if they still haven't posted any.
Overall, it was an incredibly fun experience. There's no chaos quite like the chaos of an amateur-level fashion show. I'm so lucky and thankful to be able to be a part of something like these, even when it feels to some like a total mess.
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