The biggest fashion festival in Queensland, the Mercedes
Benz Fashion Festival kicks off in Brisbane in just a few days.
Today was the first day assistants and volunteers got to help with the
preparations. The fittings start
tomorrow, clothing from bridal, emerging designers, Brisbane arcade, etc. they
all need to be assigned to models, combined with shoes and show order. Very exciting!
Today I didn't know what to expect, perhaps tirelessly
taping for hours, creating order out of chaotic racks, writing run orders, navigating
deliveries? Endless possibilities, I was hoping to do something a bit different
and I got my wish.
.jpg)
Arriving early at the newly renovated Brisbane City Hall,
after some trouble getting through the almost impenetrable black curtains, I arrived
in the room. My new home away from home,
for the next week or so. I met the other
people working on the show. Some seasoned assistants I’d worked with, others
new faces I was eager to get to know. We
got right down to it, hearing what needed to be done, catching up with each
other and figuring out where everyone should go.
My task: Bring Maiocchi’s shoe vision for their show to life
A couple assistants (including myself) went with Liz Golding, Styling Director, to her house to reload her car with racks, shoes and
mirrors. There Liz assigned us a bag of
shoes we could paint and showed us the inspiration photo for the
shoes and set us to work while she and the rest of the assistants worked on
other tasks. The inspiration was shoes painted in bright colours, contrasting
with the outfits, and patterned with motifs like stripes and spots. The shoes were a completely different colour to
the dresses, for example is the dress was blue and pink the shoes would be green and orange. They added a colourful dimension to the models outfits. Hence why Maiocchi wanted something similar. Liz gave us paint and creative licence for colour
choices!
I along with another assistant, Raisah, had a mountain of
high heels in various colours which were mainly wedges with suede straps to
sort through. The shoes were easy to
paint over and due to the large wedge would give a big hit of pop colour to the
outfit. I was more than a little worried
about getting paint splatters on my carefully selected outfit but like a trooper
I got in there and did it. And I’m happy
to report that not even a fleck of paint remains on myself or my clothes after
today's painting.
Raisah and I went through each models profile sheet,
found their shoe size and wrote it next to their name and in the run order of
the show. 14 models in total all female
(thankfully because they were wearing heels!) There was a run order containing
photos of each outfit the models would be wearing. So we had our paint colours ready and assigned
two colours per each shoe. Making sure
the size corresponded. For example the
top of the shoe would be say green with the bottom orange. Or purple wedge with a fluoro pink top. We worked hard to make sure each wedge was
different. Painting was relaxing and in
the hot sun the paint dried fast meaning double or triple coats of paint were
ready to be painted almost at the moment you finished the last one.
Of course one huge disaster must occur each day, for it
to be fashion week. Today’s major drama,
occluded when black ink paint spilt on the sheets we were using. Making the colours assigned to each heel
almost illegible, and colouring part of the white table underneath black. As this was halfway through our painting
there was panic. Luckily it the paint
dried fast being in the hot Queensland sun and we were able to read it with only
a no trouble. All shoes are now ready to
be painted again tomorrow with their motifs.
I feel that this year I’m defiantly rolling up my sleeves
and diving straight into MBFF. It’s a great
feeling.
.jpg)
so many shoes!
ReplyDelete