I worked my tail off to finish my last garment for the show. It was my take on a tuxedo shirt. Here's a pic of it midway finished:
Tuesday night, I got in at 9:45 pm and caught the tail end of the designer meet and greet at FBs downtown. It was a nice welcome back...
Wednesday afternoon I had to go up to Rachel's mom's in West Chester to pick up four pairs of the new pant line that Manoj overnighted to me from Oregon because our factory in NYC shipped out ALL of our pants to a buyer there after he emailed them to have some reserved for us to take to Cincinnati. Whoops! We left with the pants an hour before the fitting and no one knew the difference...
Wednesday night was the model fitting. It's quite challenging to pick outfits for, match sizes and mark pant hems for ten guys you just met on the spot! It all worked out in the end though. My models were super cooperative and easygoing. No divas haha... Here's a few of my guys and I working to get the sizing right for them:
Thursday was the up-and-coming show at Suite in the back of Blackfinn. I rolled up solo which was a good thing... The event was a lot of fun and I got to make friends with a lot of people.
Still hoping for a good pic that I'm in from the night to pop up online :(
And lastly, Friday was the big night!
Still hoping for a good pic that I'm in from the night to pop up online :(
And lastly, Friday was the big night!
So I was gonna wear a white linen suit I had to the show but, one, it had some mystery yellow streaks on the back of them, and two... it was a dreary, grey day. So I had a change of heart and decided to rock the black velvet blazer. Problem was, the only pair of black pants I had on me that would have matched went in the dang show!
But after dealing with the previous pant crisis on Wednesday, this was cake. I jetted over to Rookwood to buy a pair of black pants that looked good with my outfit. I tried on some in Banana Republic, but as they were dress pants, with everything else being all black basically, I looked as though I were about to roll into a funeral ready to have a liiiittle too much fun. So I ended up snatching a sweet pair of Joe's Jeans from Nordstrom Rack that were dark denim with black painted on top. Score.
I got to the Regency Hyatt Ballroom with plenty of time to spare. I had two people assisting me, my friend Drew and my mom. The steamer that the designers were trying to use kept spitting water out at us and it was getting to be silly to keep using it. Then like the great Mom that she is, my mother volunteered to iron all ten outfits. Hell yes...
Things progressed as expected until the show started. Actually though, the host of the event from the CW television network, Jen Dalton, had her David Meister dress's zipper come off the track. So she was standing there having people fiddle and diddle with it trying to get it to work and I came in and volunteered to hand-sew it up for her haha. My tailoring teachers would have been so proud!
Before my guys went out, she did me a favor and read the bio and concept of the show that I typed and my mom neatly transcribed for me as I was doing other stuff on notebook paper.
So Arbitrage was third in the line up. Everything went very well, expect the DJ played the two songs in opposite order. Whatever.
In short, the concept for the show was Las Vegas and the highs and lows of gambling, which was a metaphor for taking risks in life. My guys transitioned from "the bottom to the top" with the first look being a hooded dress shirt with a worker-type patch and raw edge jeans with leather pockets to more and more polished, refined looks, ending with a tuxedo-type shirt with clean, black pants. In the middle, I had my model Jeremy (wearing the playing card print shirt) do a 52 card pickup into the crowd, which really amped them up!
Here are pics of the four looks that I had the most hand in and subsequently tied the theme of the collection together:
A lot of people have been asking about the hooded shirts... they can be purchased here. Enter the code "cincyrunway" at the checkout to receive $36 off your final order!
To see ALL the looks (taken by Thadd Fiala), click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thaddfiala/4552697009/in/set-72157623808034125/
All 11 other designers killed it. My favorite was Trash Biscuit from St. Louis. I met one of the designers Ryan Coyne at the after party and he was super cool!
A copy of the DVD of the show is being produced by Troy McDaniel. You can put your name on the interest list by joining the Facebook group. Click the image below to see the one-minute teaser:
I got a lot of great feedback and Amy from Cincy Chic mentioned us in her column in the Cincinnati Enquirer kindly saying,"...if I had to pick a male fav, it would be the Arbitrage Vegas-inspired line. My husband loved every single thing they put on the catwalk, and I’d love to see him in all of it too!"
Now comes the tough part... taking the enthusiasm from the show and turning that into sales :)
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