8 Lessons From My First Fashion Show (What I'd Do Differently)

Summary

I took part in my very first fashion show, and I learned a LOT (mostly that I am bad at time and great at ideas). If you're prepping for your first show, here are the eight lessons I wish I'd had a month earlier, plus what I'd do differently if I could turn back the clock.

• Make a real plan, with timelines, before you start daydreaming.
• Build the core garments first and save the fun accessories for later as a dopamine treat.
• Designing for different body types takes extra time, so plan for it.
• Nobody sees the inside of a runway look. Skip the perfect interiors.
• Budget your time like money, count backward from show day, and pack an emergency kit.
• Time blindness is real. Build systems and an accountability buddy around it.
• Be ready to be celebrated, and take lots of photos and video.

Transcript

Hi. Hello. You've got time to waste and I'm here to waste it. Hi. Hello. I'm Sammy and a week ago I participated in my first ever fashion show. I've only recently started designing and selling clothes and so this was an opportunity for me to show the world what I had to offer. Uh I learned a lot. I I learned so much. So, I'm going to share all of that with you. So that maybe if you're getting ready for your first fashion show or your next fashion show, maybe you won't be as uh chaotic as I was. Let me help you have your CUSS together. If you're new here, I sell vintage. I make clothes out of vintage. I upcycle vintage. And I yap a whole lot about everything related to vintage. Welcome. It's chaotic. I should be sorry, but I'm not. A few months ago, my friend Erica, also known as Tacos Treasures, one of the owners of Tacos Secondhand, told me that she was planning a vintage fashion show. She wanted to bring together uplers and stylists and designers whose focus was taking things that already existed and giving them new life. That's kind of my whole vibe. So, I was like, I'm in. What do I do? Erica was an excellent communicator. She shared frequent emails. She sent us information that we would need to know. She gave us everything we needed with months to spare. So, plenty of time. What did I do with that time? I wasted it. I have made a list of eight lessons that I learned and I'm going to do my very best to stick to that list and tell you in a cohesive order.

Lesson one, know what you're doing before you do it. Have a plan. I I'm a vibes girl. You know that I go where the wind blows me. I do what feels nice. I might start out making one thing and halfway through decide it's going to become another because that's what story I feel like the fabric is telling me. I sketched a bazillion ideas, some super complicated, some super simple and at no point did I write down to create this idea it will take you x amount of time. Like I didn't think about time. [clears throat] I should have thought about those time. It's in my name and I just I got a little time blindness. I forget, but we'll get to that later. So, by spending so much time thinking about what I was going to make and daydreaming about all of my potential options, I kind of skipped out on making a plan. And if I had taken the time to sit down and say, "Here are the things you need to do. Here's the order you need to do it. this is how long each thing will take. You know this that the other you'll be much better off. Um I didn't do that initially. I waited till just about one month before the fashion show. Literally one month, I sent out a Google form like survey to each of my models to gather their size information, their preferences, what they, you know, uh what are you comfortable showing? What are you not? Do you mind backless? Does it need a back? Does it need sleeves? All the all of the questions so that I could understand what they felt comfortable with to help guide my decisions. I should have done that much earlier. But once I did do that, I did start to make a plan and I made that list of what I would create and for who, at least at a high level so that I could like get moving in the right direction. I just I really wish I come up with that plan and acted on that plan a lot earlier because then I could have spent more time daydreaming but with guard rails. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. She gave us everything we needed with months to spare so we could plan the perfect show without any stress or overwhelm. Uh, except I apparently can't freaking read or listen, I guess, because somehow I got everything in my head completely backwards. So, we needed to each have three models and each model would have one look, one complete, you know, outfit that you either design or upcycle or style. That's it. Easy peasy. I don't know if it's because I was also planning for my husband who is in the fashion show as a stylist or what, but in my head I needed to have six models and each model needed three outfits. So from day one, I was creating tons of work for myself that didn't even need to exist. I started plotting and scheming and daydreaming and I spent a lot of time just sketching wild ideas for things that I would love to make. So, number one, know what you're going to do before you do it. So, I went in with a bazillion ideas and I had all of these great sketches. So, I thought like I'll just check a sketch, pick a fabric, and bring it to life. Easy peasy. except I like actually hadn't done any of that in advance and I didn't really know where any of my fabrics were because I'm not super organized and I was just like, "Oh, spirit will guide me to the right thing the entire time." And that was probably not the right move.

I also, because I move on vibes, I have a tendency to um to do the thing that brings me the most dopamine in the moment. So that leads me to lesson two, which was I should have started with the core pieces. And by that, what I mean is each model needed to have a garment and then some accessories would be nice, right? Except all of a sudden one day I was like, I'm going to make a snake. I'm going to make a snake collar out of buttons. And I looked at my list of what I needed to do because at least at this point I made a list. and uh it was somewhere way down here, but I decided to prioritize it and make it item number one. Why did I do that? I ended up spending about 3 days of my free time sewing buttons onto a snake that was going to be worn as an accessory to the show. Spending all of that time upfront definitely set me back on things that were much bigger priorities, you know, like the clothes. So, I just if I could turn back time, that's the one thing I would definitely change right off the bat is I wouldn't I wouldn't let myself be distracted by dopamine. I would try and stay focused on getting the core pieces done first and then offer myself those little dopamine hits as a treat. As a treat.

This leads me to lesson three. Size inclusivity takes a little extra time. If you know me at all, if you've been here a while, you know that while I am a scrawny CUSS I love, admire, respect, and honor every body type. I believe all bodies are beautiful and all bodies deserve representation, especially on the runway. So for me, it was important that I found models that were different sizes, that were different skin tones, that were different heights, that weren't all one and the same. And I do not regret that choice. And that is the choice I will make 100% of the time if I'm ever doing another fashion show. Everybody matters and everybody should be included. And I wanted everyone to feel beautiful. But what I didn't consider is that designing for different body types takes longer. And that's it's not a bad thing. It's just a thing I should have accounted for. When I make clothes, I generally use myself as the model. I make them size inclusive by, you know, stretchy waist and uh using like voluminous cuts that provide a lot of different, you know, that work for different sizes and body types. But when I was designing for this show, I was thinking about those specific models and their specific measurements and making things to fit them. I wasn't thinking so much, this item needs to be able to fit someone from a 26-inch waist to a 60inch waist. I was thinking this item needs to fit Lauren. And so I wanted to use her measurements as the basis. And I did that for each model. And that just takes a lot more time, a lot more planning. And again, it was the time I didn't account for. So I think what I've learned is that for the next opportunity like this I have I will design the clothes first and then find models to fit those clothes perhaps. I think that could be a good option or just you know uh stick with my standard or maybe not actually as I'm saying this out loud like no no I think what I do moving forward is kind of the same thing but plan time better right like I still want the models to feel beautiful I want the pieces to be made for their bodies but maybe I don't lean so heavily on the exact measurements maybe I you know, just pin it to make it exactly runway perfect. Th those could have been time-saving options.

Which leads me actually to lesson number four, which was this is not the time for perfect interiors. Sammy, nobody is going to see the inside of these garments. That is what I wish I could tell myself a month ago. This is not the time for perfect interiors. For whatever reason, your old pal Sammy here decided that the fashion show was the right time to perfect French seams, to work on flatfeld seams, to make the interiors of these garments immaculate. And I know where that idea came from. And I'll tell you, and this is kind of I'm being vulnerable here, okay? In the summer, I went to a fashion show for Memphis Fashion Week with some friends of mine. And those friends of mine are loyal and they love me and I love them for that. So when some of the looks were making their way down the runway, you know, they would say like, "Oh, they didn't finish those seams." like they would they would point out little imperfections and what they were doing was saying like look Sammy you make things better than that why aren't you in this show you know they were trying to be supportive of me they weren't trying to tear down the others but it just kind of I mean you know how us girls are sometimes you know and that's all they were really doing but that kind of stuck in my head and I thought because at first I was like well you know no one's looking at the details But then I remember well we were looking at the details, we were being judgy of those things. So it became like really important to me that each of my looks felt completely finished. That it really looked like it wasn't rushed half-hazardly and thrown onto the runway at the last second, which you know, a couple of them ended up being exactly that, which I'm sure we'll get to. It's on the list. But I was just I don't know. I was striving for a perfection that I didn't need to be. And I do think 100% like next time I like that in the beginning I was like if I ever do this again and then it's when I do this again maybe. And now it's next time I do this. I'm getting more confident as I yap. But I do think that next time I won't be as focused on finishing those insides because those items probably won't be for sale. They'll be like prototypes of other things. So yeah, I did not need to spend time on those interiors, right? Like a runway look is going to be seen for roughly 45 seconds. No one is turning over the hems to make sure the seams are finished. And if I was going to sell those items, I could finish them the rest of the way after the show, like when I had time and wasn't on a deadline necessarily. Now, the good thing about spending that time on the front end is, you know, now I can just put them on the rack, get them sold if I wanted to because they are done. They are perfect. But with that said, I created so much unnecessary stress for myself by trying to do like perfect finishes for no reason. So, don't don't do that. You know, maybe make sure the outside looks great. Press open those seams. You know, finish the exterior. But good lord, honey, do not waste time on the guts for this. Don't do it. Don't do it.

Time pressure was the biggest uh the biggest lesson that keeps recurring. Everything comes back to time. And so for lesson number five, budget your time like you budget your money, baby. You got to count backward from show day. Know the number of looks, know the number of models, know the amount of time each thing is going to take. and really like bake in some cushion for yourself because you are going to wake up panicked on Tuesday when the fashion show is Friday and suddenly nothing is working right and you're so far behind a schedule that you didn't even know you needed to keep. Put dates on the calendar. Make sticky notes. Set reminders. Write things down. Do whatever you need to do to stay on top of your project plan. Don't waste like you don't waste money on stupid stuff. So, don't waste time on stupid stuff. Don't worry about those interiors. Don't worry about the teeny accessory that you may or may not use. Y'all, I made earrings for each person. I made these gorgeous little earrings with the help of Lindsay. Uh they're made out of thread spools and like uh like scrap fabric. They had little buttons and little hooks. I made them for everybody. One one model wore them. There were six. I was one of the models and I didn't even wear them. Why did I waste so much time on those? Um, I made two cute little bags. One said, "Hi, hello with buttons." It didn't come out great, so I didn't want to send it down the runway, but I spent probably 4 hours total working on that, and it was all a waste. The other bag, it said uh Momento Mory on the back of it's like a funeral bursters bag. I I did a time lapse video of me putting those buttons on there. I can't tell you how much time I spent doing that. And then I didn't have enough time to finish the strap. So I carried it as my bag for the evening and within an hour it broke. So I wasted at least that that alone those two. No. So between the earrings and those two bags that was probably realistically 8 hours 9 hours of work that didn't even get shown that I like put that pressure on myself and it didn't get shown because I wasn't budgeting my time properly. And it's like, damn, all that undue stress for nothing, babe.

Lesson six, hope for the best, prepare for the worst, expect the worst. CUSS happens. CUSS happens. Okay? Something will go wrong. Probably 10 things will go wrong and you need to expect it and account for it early on, baby. Um, for instance, I knew that Lindsay, my best friend, one of my models, was going to be spending the night with me the night before the fashion show. She was coming in town early to help out. She's the best. I couldn't live without her, I swear. So, I waited to make her outfit till last because I was going to make it with her and it would be like a fun little like friend date project. But by that point, I was also super far behind on like everything else too. Um, when we got so Tuesday night, let me let me rewind.

Planning for the worst. Okay, so it's the Tuesday before the fashion show and it is fitting day and we do like a walk through of what the actual fashion show will be. This is the first time my models are getting to see their outfits. I have most of them most of the way done at this point for everyone except for Lindsay, my best friend, because she lives out of town and she was coming in town the night before. So, I knew I didn't really have to have her outfit ready by Tuesday that I could have until Thursday. I shouldn't have done that. That was that was a flaw. That was that was a dumb move. I should have aimed to have hers done by Tuesday as well. But at the fitting, um Fia's dress was almost done, but not quite. And I was going to kind of pin it to her and do the final cuts when we got home that night. But when I put it on her, Fia is gorgeous. She has a beautiful body and um I wanted her to feel so beautiful and feel so like baddy or whatever. But when she put that dress on, she looked frumpy. Like I it there was too much fabric up here. It needed to show a little more. I hated everything about it. And she acted she she's such a girl. She acted like she was fine with it. Like she was like, "No, this is cute. like we could add a little maybe a little cape or something. And I was like, "Yes, like it's going to have flowiness. It's going to have motion." But I just was not loving this on her. The pleats weren't like folding quite right and I had like too much fabric and I hated it. So I was like, "Okay, Tuesday night I'm going to get it fixed." I started working on it. It was kind of a disaster. I was getting really frustrated. So I went to bed. Then Wednesday I was like, "All right, I got you." I stayed up till 400 a.m. Wednesday fighting with this thing. I spent probably 4 hours trying to hand sew like the pleats where I wanted them to go. I I got so angry. I felt this burning rage in my soul. And then I felt like a failure because like why can't I get this stupid thing to work? And I wouldn't have felt that way in normal circumstances. I would have just like ripped it off and started over. But I had all of this like time anxiety. And then there is that like cost sunk fallacy cuz I'm thinking, well, I've already spent this much time on it. Maybe if I just spend another hour or two, it'll be right. Y'all, by midnight that night, I had to just rip it off. And I just started the top over. I turned it into this cute like two actually three-piece set with like a crop top that buttoned in the front and this cute little mini skirt and then this long trailing beautiful like train. It was two pieces so it caught air. It was gorgeous. I'm sure I'm probably playing an overlay of it right now. Um, it came out beautifully, but it was a disaster first. And because her body is so much different than mine, uh, as president of the itty bitty titty committee here, I had to get creative. So, I used uh I call them drag titties, but it's like a chest plate generally worn by drag queens to try and like mimic the fullness that I was lacking. I didn't know if it was going to work, but it honestly did. I didn't even have to pin her into her outfit, and it came out perfectly. But again, even with that one, I spent a lot of time making sure that the inside was perfect, and I definitely shouldn't have. I should have just gotten the outside good, you know. Um, yeah. So, that was a freaking nightmare.

And then day of, so you have you have worst case scenario while you're creating your looks. Then you have worst case scenario day of that you have to plan for. Um things might not fit right. Things might fall apart. You might have forgot to back stitch and suddenly there's a hole in the seat of your pants. You're going to want to bring an emergency kit. We brought safety pins. We brought thread and needles and extra buttons. We brought uh energy drinks, some tape, a lint roller. We didn't bring a steamer. I wish we had cuz I could have, you know, if we had brought a steamer, I could have made sure everything was just so. Uh we ended up using a lot of the safety pins. They did come in clutch, especially because I didn't even finish Lindsay's outfit. We got her pants done that morning, but the top was one worst case scenario after the other. Like, we had all the pieces laid out. Should have taken an hour to put it together, except the lace was dry rot and started falling apart. Every time I'd sew it, it would just crumble. So, then I had to go find more lace. But by adding the second layer, it changed the way things were laying. It was such a freaking cluster CUSS So, honestly, we got there and I was like, "Lind, come here." and I just started hiding pins inside to turn this like poncho into a top. No one was any the wiser. Everybody was complimenting her. And that really reiterated for me like, "Girl, you spent too much time on details that did not matter." Nobody said, "Wow, that top would have been way cuter if she wasn't pinned into it." Nobody could tell that there were safety pins. You know, so again, budget your time wisely. Plan for worst case scenario.

Lesson seven, as if we haven't done this enough already, gang. Time blindness is real, so build around it. If you are a creative person, like I'm sure you are because you're hanging out with me. If you have ADHD, which you probably do because my tutorials and my yaps work for you, we're on that same wavelength of the spectrum, baby. You probably have time blindness. You know, you probably get lost in a moment. I do. To me, like six weeks and tomorrow kind of feel like the same amount of time until all of a sudden they don't. Until all of a sudden it clicks that the number of hours required and the number of hours that exist do not equal out. It can be rough. You know, it's hard. It's hard to stay on a deadline. And also I hate rules. I hate being told what to do. So even when it's me telling myself, you need to do X by Y so that Z, I don't want to listen. I will push back against myself. I really like and no amount of vivance and eight hours of rest and strategic planning and documentating documentated none of it, you know, none of it seems to just fix the issue of time blindness. I'm not going to say work harder, work harder, cuz working harder is not going to help. But I am going to remind you to put as many systems in place as you can. Make to-do lists every day. Add reminders in your calendar. You know, have it as both a calendar event and a to-do task every day. Put your responsible type A friend in charge of like checking in on you and making sure that you're staying on task. 10 days till da da da. Do you have da da da ready? You know, really do do what you can as early as you can to set yourself up for success so that you don't let your time blindness turn into time anxiety because you, you know, you'll find yourself leaving your house at 5:00 p.m. to get to the fashion show that you were supposed to be at at 5:00 p.m. and you're pinning the top onto your model as she's walking on the runway. Like, you don't want that. You want it to be calm and smooth because also, if you're like me, you're about to be super anxious that all of these eyes are on you and your creations and there's a little bit of panic that comes with that. And you want that to be the only panic. So all of that to say time blindness is real. So build around it. Protect yourself early on from that stress later on. Future you will thank past tense you.

You know all of this leads me to lesson number eight. Prepare to be celebrated. Okay. So, I was so lost in all of the details, all of the get it done, get it out there, get it on the runway, get the models, d a million things that it like never even crossed my mind that people would see these things, that they would respond to those things, that they might love them, that they might hate them, that they might want to get in my face and tell me I'm the worst designer they've ever seen. I didn't even have time for like those thoughts to occur to me. So, I was wholly unprepared for after the show. Long story short, I was not mentally prepared for the number of people that would come up to me after the show and tell me how much they loved my stuff. Um, it was it was so cool and I was so grateful, you know, like I was a little bit afraid that someone might come up to me and be like, "Wow, yours were the worst pieces in the show. How did they even let you in this? What are you doing?" You know, but um I'm not great at receiving compliments and I I wish I could have studied in advance. I wish that I had been able to like mentally prepare and then like kind of write my little thank you script because instead what would happen is someone would come up and tell me a very nice thing and I stood there like a deer in the headlights and I like looked around for someone to save me and they're just being nice and they're saying like oh I really like what you did with this and like following you here and like I noticed and I'm just like a deer in the CUSS headlights and then I'm like uh thanks like I just I feel [snorts] like I handle these. I handle compliments so poorly and I wasn't ready to get them. I didn't think anyone maybe would approach me. Anyway, just be ready cuz people are going to love things that you make. People like to see other people do creative things and whether it's weird, whether it's high-end couture or held on with safety pins, like people will want to address you. So, be prepared. Be ready to smile. Maybe find a YouTube video that tells you how to accept a compliment because I've yet to figure that part out. Um, I'm just so awkward. Um, it's nice. I'm glad that people said nice things. I just wish I was ready. I wish I could have handled it perhaps a bit better.

I know that as I've been sharing each of these lessons, I've also kind of been telling you what I would do differently. But, uh, I did I did bake in a section for what I would do differently in this video. and I'm trying to practice what I preach and stick to a plan. So, let's let's say I was invited to do this again or I turned back the clock and we're doing it all over again and I just watched this video so that I knew to set myself up for success instead of stress. Here's what I would do differently. Number one, I would say yes and I would start as soon as I said yes. I would start referencing my sketchbook. I would start finding my models and I would get moving. Less daydreaming, more doing. Two, I would sketch the entire collection first. I would print it out and I would put it on top of the fabrics that I plan to use. I would set those out and I would walk past them every day deciding, do I really want it like this or not? maybe for like three days, but I would do it early and I would get moving much sooner. I would spend less time daydreaming and more time manifesting and I would spend more time using ideas I had already started than waiting for new ideas to come to me. That's actually a whole lot of things that I just shoved into number two. But number three, I would build the core looks first and do the accessories after. Because I'm so dopamine driven, I let myself get side quested pretty often on, "Oh, this collar would be fun." Or, "Oh, I should work on these earrings." No, next time it is the core looks first, then the accessories. I'll find ways to get dopamine along the way, but it can't it can't be little stuff first. I got to do the big stuff first. Sammy, you have to do the big stuff first. Sammy, rewatch this. Replay it. You have to do the big stuff first. Number four, I would figure out that size range sooner. I would send the survey. I would do the measurements sooner. And I would plan to prioritize the outfits for the body types that are least like mine because those are the ones that I'm going to need to do fittings for. They're the ones that might not come out quite right initially. If your body type is like mine, I can CUSS try it on at 4:00 a.m. and figure out if it's going to work or not. But if you got big boobies or, you know, some junk in the trunk, like, I can't replicate that myself and I'm gonna want to try it on that person. So, I should prioritize making those outfits first to give us more time to get it right. Uh, and I think that I would not wait until the week of the fashion show to have them try those looks on. I would be doing that much sooner. Um, and I would have them try them on before I had reached as far in the process, you know, more when I'm in the wireframing stage. Number five, I would I would stick to my plan. I This time I did eventually get things in a calendar on a to-do list, you know, setting reminders, but I would have set all of that up sooner. And I think that I would have also delegated a friend and said, "Hey, can you check in on me every Thursday, you know, and make sure that I've done this and this and this?" Or I would have maybe sent Lindsay my entire plan, like this is my project plan. Will you just try to keep me on track? Something like that, I think, would have really helped. Having like an accountability buddy is great. You know, sometimes you need a body double. So, maybe I could have facetimed someone while I did some work. Anything like that to just really lock in and stay on schedule so that I don't stay stressed. Six, I'd get that emergency kit prepped early. I would have my go bag ready well in advance. Maybe even adding scraps of the fabric that were left over in case there's like a super malfunction. Just really covering all the bases as soon as possible. We were leaving at 5:00 p.m. for the event. We were supposed to be there at 5:00 pm and Lindsay, by the grace of God, because I sure was not all in my head, was the one, you know, she was running through grabbing all of the supplies at the last minute. Do you think we'll need clips? Do you think we'll need this? Should I get these scissors or these? If I had just set all that stuff aside like a week ago, we wouldn't have had to sweat it even a little. Uh, and I think that would have been better, you know. Uh, seven. The last thing that I would do is be prepared for people to clap and let them and just graciously accept the compliments and um, smile and not be weird, I guess. I don't know. Uh, oh, you know what? And also, another thing that I would do, I would take more pictures. I would take more videos. I would take more pictures. I would ask somebody in advance to please be in charge of this because I am pulling together footage from every source I can find because my camera roll is empty. You're you're going to get caught up in the moment. You're going to be busy and distracted and, you know, rushing to get a model buttoned into her skirt because she showed up at 7 for the event that starts at 7 because she also has time blindness. [gasps] uh and you're gonna forget to record it and to capture all those moments. So, that's that's definitely another thing that I just thought of and wasn't even on the list that I really wish I had done. So, that's that's it. That's what I would do differently.

In conclusion, I'm bad at time. I'm great at ideas and I'm super grateful to Erica and everyone involved with Tacos secondhand. This was my first fashion show and I feel like it was an incredible experience. They were so organized, everything was planned so well and they set us up for success at every turn and I could not be more grateful for this opportunity. Um, and thank you. Thank you for being here and for watching and for learning with me from me and teaching me stuff, too. If I forgot something that you think is super important, please put it in the comments. And if you have any questions uh or anything I can explore more, let me know. Uh now I'm going to just I think I'm going to close this out. We're going to do do. But maybe we'll play a little more fashion show footage here at the end. I don't know. But I love you. I thank you. Uh if you've ever done a fashion show or you're about to do your first, tell me in the comments what you learned. I would love to know that I'm not the only one who is struggling. the way I was struggling. And any tips you have that could make my next fashion show better, please let me know. Thank you so much. I love you. Let's go watch some cool clothes for a sec. Okay, so pretend that you can hear the Ramones cuz that's what would be playing. You saw Tiarara. There's Fia. There's my husband Waka with all of the models. I made Tiarara's tie skirt and in the rock pants for Hannah and those cool pants for me. And there's Fia in her three-piece set looking phenomenal. And then next you'll see Lindsay in her duck outfit. That's the top that I didn't finish. But oh my god, the lace panels on the sides of those pants were everything. And then Lauren in her amazing outfit. I love the flowiness on this like lace shaw that I made. But this is like literally all the footage I have. So this is what I mean when I tell you you've got to remember to record things cuz I had to get stuff from everybody else. Anyway, thank you for coming to my fashion show. I hope you loved everything and I love you. Bye. Thanks for wasting your time with me. Waste more time by liking and subscribing and watching another video. Thanks.