Saturday, April 21, 2001
Model Behavior
What it's like to be in a fashion show: the second of an occasional series of columns.

10 a.m. Supposedly the time we're all supposed to arrive so we can have our dress rehearsal before the show starts at 12:30. (Yes, we're lagging incredibly here.) When I arrive at 10:10, I find about seven or so people there, and most of the outfits aren't even laid out yet, so I take off for a bit to watch a parade that my co-worker's in. I'm gone for awhile, and nobody notices. The clothes still aren't even laid out.

10:30 a.m. One of the dressers finally digs up my clothes, I walk over and see that they're checking out the formal outfit. It's a blue satin long skirt, tank top and cape, which somehow was mislabeled as "semi-formal" and shoved into the order accordingly. At this point, the model committee chair and dresser decide to move that outfit into the formal section of the show, which I've been hinting about for two days now. I grab my clothes and fiddle around with them.

For the record, the show's order goes like this:
1. Random outfit involving ropes that makes no sense.
2. Collection of tank tops.
3. What I call the "garden girl" outfit, which consists of a garden hose as skirt, garden glove top, leaf-covered shoes, fake green hair and a rake headdress. It cracks me up no end, and the designer's willing to wear it as the er, comedy relief.
4. Tie-dyed outfits.
5. Casual wear, which includes my first ensemble.
6. Metal accessories, which look good and painful.
7. Semiformal wear, featuring outfit #2 for me.
8. More metal wear, this time more clothingish.
9. Formal wear, featuring my third outfit.
10. "Signature collections", groupings of four or more garments done by students. This year's themes include "peekaboo" formals, sheer and not so sheer formals, hardwear (you probably figured that one on your own), quilted evening wear, "fringe, gold and glitz" and oddly Goth outfits with high necks.
The actual people going in what order, however, will change. A LOT.

I then run into Dana, another designer, one who does elaborate historical costume. She's wearing what she calls a "nobles" Renaissance outfit, and the thing looks gorgeous and tight and hot all at once. She'd certainly agree with that description. Poor girl gets to wander around in that all day long, since it takes a minimum half hour to get into it all. But on the other hand, most impressive work to ever come out of this school. We gossip for awhile about her love life, which has done a 180 since I saw her last. In the meantime, more people slowly trickle in.

11:15 a.m. Someone announces that we should get into our first outfits because we're going to do a dress rehearsal. So everyone slowly tries to figure out how to put on their clothes (some outfits being quite complicated), plasters on more makeup, fiddles with their hair, etc.

My dilemma is changing- I have a bloody quick change between outfits #1 and 2. I play Cinderoutfit with my designs, first trying on my semicasual outfit (a red velvet and white-with-red-flowered short dress) with the leggings for my first outfit and seeing if they look too horrible to go together so I'll have one less thing to change out of. They look bad, AND the black leggings show through the white front of the dress. Heck, even my underwear does that, I discover five minutes later. Shit, I'll have to wear a slip, and that's really gonna take a lot of time to manage to put on too.

I then try on the first outfit. Over a navy blue leotard and black leggings, I put on a red skirt made of strips of fabric that loop around and a blue woven top. The top is surprisingly hard to get into, since the loops that form the back of it are hard to tell up from down on. I spend an embarrassing ten minutes trying to figure out how to put it on. I stare at my ensemble, complete with a blue and red woven cape, and realize that if I left the leggings off, I'd have less to change out of. The outfit looks okay without them, so I ditch the leggings. Aren't these fashion decisions fun to read about?

11:45 a.m. Oh yeah, we're going to have our FIRST dress rehearsal, out of TWO, any minute now. Really. I find it incredibly hard to believe that we're going to manage two dress rehearsals before we start, even if we're only rehearsing the first fifteen minutes of the show.

Some rap group (featuring an electric violin?!) is out on our stage, which is both loud and frustrating. Normally the stage is supposed to be all ours, but some morons decided to schedule acts before us, between us and after us all day, limiting our time to "half hour Or Else." Call it a hunch that's not going to happen.

I peek outside and spot my parents trying to reserve a spot and looking tortured by the rap music. I also see part of our stage set blowing right over in the winds, and run off to tell the show chair. She freaks and runs off to find help. Within a few minutes the entire rest of the set has blown down, and the set dressers try desperately to hold things up. They end up having to stand behind the pieces the whole show.

I notice that two girls are trying to put together the announcer's list of garments. She receives them around noon, I think.

12 p.m. Okay, NOW the "first" dress rehearsal starts, out in the hallway since the stage isn't ours. My friend Jackie shows up around this time to hang out with me pre-show and is awed at the outfits. I end up explaining a lot of them to her, specifically why so many of them are incredibly weird ("The teacher really got into metal this year, so we had to make a lot of metal crap," for example) and could never be sold anywhere. She takes some pictures. One girl shows up for rehearsal finally and is dumbfounded to hear she should have arrived two hours ago.

Here's how the dress rehearsal goes: awkwardly. Unlike most folks, I sensibly set up my clothing pile right by the dressing room door, but even then I'm having problems. I'm totally fumbling trying to get out of the first outfit with the weird straps, stumbling around, unable to get out of one pair of shoes and into another gracefully, flashing tits around the room, and that damn slip is slowing me up big time. And my hair keeps being eaten by the zipper to boot. I manage to run out "on time" (so to speak), but a lot of the time someone's yelling for a model who hasn't made it out yet. I worry about the actual show if we're not getting anything together 20 minutes before showtime. That's when some cutting goes on: I realize that ditching the first pair of shoes is also a good idea, since the costume's so weird that it makes more sense to not have any on. (It occurs to me too late that I could have worn my red shoes for the second outfit with the first as well. Sheesh.) I also give up on the slip and resign myself to crotch flashing. At least the underwear's white?

12:15 p.m. "First" dress rehearsal ends, we're told to immediately change back into outfit #1 because we're going to do another one.

12:20 p.m. Never mind that, get dressed for the real show. Scrapping rehearsal!

Conversations around me between the show chairs go like this:
"I can't find Betty."
"Then drop her out of the show."
"Oh, I found her."
They're changing the order around like mad, despite caveats from some that the announcer's already been given the script and we can't change it now.

12:30 p.m. We're not starting the show because the rap group is STILL going on! And they were bitching at us about being late? Even after they shut up, they've still gotta move the set pieces around and arrange the music, etc. Oy vey.

12:45 p.m. Show #1 starts finally. I can't really see or hear anything from behind, but from what I can tell the models are moving in and out and managing to be in the right order and on time. This is a bloody miracle considering how little rehearsal has gone on. First outfit: I walk out there looking calm yet feeling a little silly hearing my name plugged by the announcer. I tune her out and get in the catwalk zone, doing the walk, little smile, ignoring the mobs around the stage. I do, however, get annoyed at the frat boys at the end of the stage, one of whom yells out "Twenty bucks!" Whether that's how much he thinks it cost to make the thing or indicating that's how much I'd cost him for the night, I don't know and I'd be afraid to ask. And either way I'm a bit insulted. I start tearing off my clothes (so much for "taking care of the garments") and throwing them around the room once I get inside. By some miracle I manage to get out in time for #2, and as the announcer names off me and the girl I'm walking on with, I think "Geez, must be weird for them all to see me popping up all the time." The announcer somehow thinks that I did both our outfits, which is a surprise to me. Number 3 goes much better, as both the incoming and outgoing garments aren't too complicated. The blue satin is the most impressive to the crowd, especially with my trailing cape and holding it out to show off the butterfly I painted on the back. I look gorgeous.

After I'm done, I hang around the back of the set with Dana and her ex-boyfriend/stage escort (similarly dressed style), who comments that the announcer got his name wrong and mispronounced several words describing their outfits. "But oh well, I'm only here to get the recognition of three years of work at this school," she says. I enjoy the warmth of my cape, since it's blustery out here, and watch the Signature collection models parade in and out. The show chair's mom asks Dana how she made her skirt poufy, which leads to a long discussion on hoops versus sixteen layers of chiffon on another girl's dress.

1:15 p.m. Show #1's over; we're released on our own recognizance until 1:40. I put my everyday jeans and sweatshirt on, grab my wallet and go looking for food, only to find that the lines are so long I don't have the time to wait. I then go find some of my friends working at a club booth (one of whom just attended the show) and hang out with them for a bit. I realize how incredibly tired I feel, and it's hard to get back up and return on time.

1:45 p.m. Despite the fact that the rap group took up so much time and threw everyone's schedule off by fifteen minutes, they're claiming that yes, we will be going on at 2 p.m. Yeah, tell that to the guys out there with the large weird masks running around the stage. I pick up the first outfit from where it's been pitched on the floor and once again get lost in trying to figure out how to put the damn top on.

I wander around the place bored. An ex-coworker of mine asks me to talk to another designer's (they're roommates) video camera about how I made what I'm wearing. It's fun, I feel like I'm talking for television somehow. After that I hang out with some of the quilted dress models. The designer, Mindy, runs up and says that someone's just offered to buy the tank top she made for the show and will pay her whatever she wants. Mindy is stunned beyond belief, babbling "What would I charge? I hate that thing! I made it in two hours out of scraps!" I vote for $25, as it looks that good that she'd believe that as a price for it. Mindy goes on to say that it's easier to price the quilted dresses, as they cost about $200 apiece (she got a grant to do them) and the labor hours were enormous. "Someone offered to buy them too, but they'd be about a thousand dollars," she says. "Not exactly affordable by sorority girls." I ask her what she'll do with them after this (5 out of 6 don't fit her) and she says they'll hang in her closet. I find it sad to think that she spent so many many many many hours on these gorgeous dresses and they're unlikely to be seen again. We start a discussion on how there's never any place to wear formal wear besides the prom and how there need to be more formal occasions.

2:15 p.m. Second show starts, and it's pretty much a blur to me. My mom shows up on the side to take my picture, and another girl I've known for years that's modeling, Kristin, nearly backs into her with a cigarrette. I'm thinking "Oh great, Mom's gonna kill her for that" when Kristin turns around and squeals "You're Jennifer's mom? I'm so happy to meet you!" and starts going on to her about what a wonderful person I am. I'm really dumbfounded and touched. I had no idea she felt that way about me, especially when I don't talk to her all that often (though we live a few doors down from each other). I finally notice "oh yeah, I'm supposed to be on now" and run off and do my thing three more times. As far as I know, no more catcalls, and the clothing changes go easier, and the announcer figured out that I didn't make the other model's dress. It's already over?