cfi-The Look and The Law Aug 09:The Look, The Law & The Knowledge 2009 07/09/2009 13:55 Pag
Of course, you must be present all the time as it is very important that you make
the contact with press and buyers. In fact, it is crucial to schmooze. This
presupposes that you will be clean, polite, sober, not hung-over and preferably not
reeking of garlic – you need these people to become your friends, and return.
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0
A PRESENTATION WITH MODELS
This could be a good compromise, provided you can afford a few models and can
get free hair and make-up. Like the basic presentation, it means you can get close
OOK
L
up and personal with press and buyers.
So, what do you need for a presentation with models? Basically, all you are adding
THE
is the girls – you will need between four and six and they should have no more than
three changes each. You must rehearse them. They have to sell the clothes so that
they look interesting. Standing round limp and embarrassed is no use to anybody.
But the golden rule is KEEP IT QUICK. Nobody has time to hang around.
Before we move on from presentations, it is important that you consider their great
drawback. Press is vital for the building of any career and, at collection time, that
means pictures. It is very rare for a newspaper to use a posed studio shot. Current
editorial policy is to feature only runway shots because they have an immediacy and
movement which static shots lack. So, if you are doing a presentation, especially if
only using mannequins, you could be at a disadvantage, although at this point in
your career you might consider it less damaging than the bills for a runway show!
But you also have to be realistic and ask yourself honestly how high your chances
of being featured in your first couple of seasons by a major newspaper actually are.
Pretty slim, is the honest answer.
SELLING
Let us imagine that, say, your second collection did well enough to stimulate interest
in your third – and from big international stores, including some in America and Asia.
How exciting! But wait… what seems at first sight the Sword of Victory can, only
too soon, become the Sword of Damocles, hovering above your head as a
reminder of the precariousness of human happiness.
The big temptation, which is very hard to resist, is to accept orders without knowing
precisely how you can produce them to the standard required, for the date required.
When a store writes an order, a shipping date will be agreed. This is, from that
moment, set in stone. You must deliver by that date. And there are very clear and
sensible reasons why. During the nineties so many promising young London
designers killed their businesses because they had no capacity for production and
therefore missed deadlines. Don’t join them.
www.davenportlyons.com
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