How To Plan A Fashion Show (And Not Die Trying)
8 min. read | Story & Photography by A.M.
In a digital world with endless opportunities and distractions, fashion shows are a relevant and useful part of a larger marketing strategy.
Fashion shows require the following philosophy:
Know your audience better than they know themselves.
Create an experience worth sharing.
Everything must connect to your brand story.
Remember that fashion is a universal language.
Your show is your personal guarantee.
And the following practical applications:
Be Production-Ready.
Get The Right People On board.
Invite A Diverse Audience.
Execute A Precise Creative Direction.
Inspire, Delight & Surprise.
Get Viral.
The outlets for media distribution are readily available. Help us see your vision of a future to which we want to belong. It all starts by giving life to your apparel and accessories, which need to be worn by aspirational people capable of inspiring feelings of desire and belonging. And it continues with buyers returning season after season.
Backstage during Seattle Fashion Week SS17 Runway Event, October 2016. Makeup and hairstyling provided by Vann Studio.
If you’re reading this, you might be an independent fashion professional that wants to promote your fashion business in ways that are in alignment with your brand story and are financially achievable. But you have your doubts. Are fashion shows even necessary in a direct marketing world? Do they connect with consumers? How do they translate into sales?
Fair questions.
Shopify, Facebook, and Instagram make it quite simple to automate a digital marketplace. And there are more ways to connect with customers than ever before. But in a world with endless options, we typically (and often surprisingly) default to what’s familiar. And one of the most important things we can do is merge what’s familiar with what’s surprising in order to create something that’s truly powerful.
Remember the last time you were on Netflix?
Variety reports that in a comparison between Netflix and Disney+, “Netflix’s U.S. catalog of 47,000 TV episodes and…movie library of 4,000 titles,” (according to Ampere Analysis, cited) is about as massive an amount as anyone could hope to consume. If the average television episode runs 42 minutes (which it might not—have you ever tried to compile 47,000 episodes worth of data?) that’s 1,974,000 minutes of available content, or approximately 3.76 years of your life, not counting movies.
That’s a lot of binge watching.
Variety then arrives at a key insight. While Disney has less content than its competitors, “Disney’s top content beats both Netflix and Amazon in consumer perceptions of quality, according to Ampere Analysis.”
In other words, quality over quantity. And in Disney’s case, quality can be measured by how nostalgia awakens strong feelings of familiarity in the consumer. Our feelings of nostalgia often and instantly trigger positive memories of childhood, family, and life lessons learned in touching ways. Authentic familiarity.
Netflix doesn’t have nostalgia to rely upon. They’re new to the game. Instead, they’ve developed algorithms that intelligently study your browsing habits and data trails, cross-reference that with their available content, and offer you suggestions. In other words, Netflix offers you what it thinks you like based on things you already like. In this sense, they are learning how to recreate nostalgia in the consumer as quickly as possible so that you know you can always count on Netflix to give you what you want. In a sea of endless choice, Netflix decides for you. And if you’re like most viewers, you’ll gladly ignore the thousands of other options. Artificial familiarity.
In both cases, Disney and Netflix have put into practice a powerful tool that creates win-win scenarios for content distributors and consumers alike. That tool, as Seth Godin puts it, is The Regular Kind.
The Regular Kind are the things that are familiar to you. The things that you already love, are excited about, and can’t wait to share with your friends. And no matter how exciting something completely new might sound, we almost always default to things that are familiar to us whenever there’s even a little friction. This can contribute to path dependency—which under the best circumstances, develops brand loyalty, but under the worst conditions, develops resistance that permanently turns us away from your brand story.
So what does this have to do with fashion shows?
Simply this.
We have endless opportunities to watch a seemingly endless amount of fashion designers presenting an even more endless supply of fashion collections multiple times per year.
And the avenues to watch fashion shows are growing every year. Periodicals and journalistic outlets used to be the only place you could see a new collection before it went to department stores if you weren’t important enough to be invited to attend in person.
Now, anyone on the planet can watch the latest from Alexander McQueen, Bottega Veneta, Chanel, Comme Des Garçons, Louis Vuitton, NYFW, Versace—and countless others—while in their jammies on YouTube, Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, Snapchat, Periscope, and on down the rabbit hole until weeks of our lives have passed us by.
And most people will always default to brands that are familiar because those are the names they grew up with. So when they watch a fashion show they weren’t invited to, it’s probably not from the new label that no one’s heard of yet. It’s probably the brand that to them represents quality and status because that’s the story they were always told.
(Quick aside. To be fair, innovators will always go for things that are new. And they’ll definitely help make your ideas spread. For your first show, stick to that audience exclusively. But as you build your brand, you will likely increase in complexity and involve more people at every stage of the creative process.)
So how do you connect with an audience when there are so many competitors—many of whom have deep pockets and generations of path dependency—in a world with infinite options?
Put aside statistics for a minute.
The answer sounds too simple to be true, but it involves wisdom that has survived the test of time. You need to do one thing above all else. Delight your existing and potential customers with an amazing experience. And the way you do it is different for every business, but it involves a few common things.
setup at Union Station during Seattle Fashion Week, October 2016. Lighting provided by Nth Degree Creative. Audio provided by Viation.
Know your audience better than they know themselves.
This sounds obvious, because it is. You’ve got to know where your customers are spending time and how that connects to prevailing technologies. Would they rather be a part of a live experience? Or would they prefer to stream a show own YouTube? Or both? Do they value celebrity endorsement? Or do they prefer things that look and feel grassroots? The better you know your audience, the easier it is to create experiences that compel them to offer you their most valuable assets—their time and attention.
Create an experience worth sharing.
It’s not enough to create a publicity stunt or get a celebrity to exchange their influence for a potential impact on your bottom line. Everyone wants to know deep down that we are all good people making good decisions based on available data and an established track record of trust and exceeding expectations. So it has to feel right. You must know the people you serve well enough to provide them something that’s too amazing not to share with everyone they know. If they keep it to themselves—even if they love it—you’ve missed an opportunity.
Everything must connect to your brand story.
From the moment people read your press release to the moment they leave your show, make it clear who you are and the things for which you stand. More on this in a bit.
Remember that fashion is a universal language.
Your business goals demand that you lower your cost of doing business and scale up production in order to maximize your potential revenue. But you are first and foremost an Artist offering a unique worldview to an audience that loves art and and wants to fall in love with things that look and feel like a world in which they want to remain. What does that world look like? What does it feel like? The power of a fashion show is deeply rooted in the syntax of world-building and storytelling. Show us a vision of the future in which we cannot wait to belong.
Your show is your personal guarantee.
Too many independent fashion shows end up creating excellent theater and cinema—and stop there. You absolutely must back up everything you do with a guarantee of quality and customer service. Show pieces are not necessarily what customers will interact with in your ready-to-wear collections. But you can’t bait-and-switch us with visions of couture and then offer us print-on-demand totes and sneakers. We want to buy what we see, or at the very least, buy into what we see. And we need to trust that you can deliver that to us when it comes time to make a purchase.
There’s more to be sure, but let’s bring this all together.
Front-of-House at Couture & Cars Fashion Show, July 2019.
Although a fashion show is just one part of a larger marketing strategy, it’s still a very important one. That’s because there’s plenty of ways for you to reach your customer, but not as many ways to create something that offers the thrill and feelings of belonging associated with live experiences. The prestige of a show conveys feelings of tradition and world-building that speak to customer service and loyalty. You have the undivided attention of people who love what you have on offer. And for a brief period of time, you can positively influence how they feel about spending future time, energy, and money with you.
So in a best-case scenario, a fashion show can create a vision of the future so compelling that we can’t help but share it with everyone we know. And the way we do that in fashion is to wear it. And when people ask us about our personal style, we get to say how much we love your brand because of who you are, what you stand for, and how great it feels to be a part of the world that you’re building.
Models wearing designer apparel from Gustavo Apiti (above) and Dream Dresses by Phuong Minh Nguyen (Below), July 2019.
There are some things that every show must have in order to be successful, some that you know, and some you might not have considered.
Be Production-Ready.
The business goal of a fashion show is to sell apparel and accessories. While you can surely create a meaningful experience, it will serve no one if you go bankrupt because of poor financial planning. Ensure that you have adequate supply to meet your forecasted demand so that you can successfully redirect our attention from the positive emotions we experienced at the runway event to a trunk-show, stockist, or landing page where we can interact with it afterward.
Get The Right People On Board.
Generally speaking, fashion shows involve all of the following:
Creative Director / Art Director (creative planning and executive direction of the overall experience);
Production Designer (similar to Creative Director, specializing in designing aspects of production);
Production Manager (converts creative input into budgetary planning, oversight, and execution);
Fashion Stylist (styles and manages wardrobe for fittings and runway events);
Dressers (assistants to the Fashion Stylist responsible for dressing models in their assigned wardrobe);
Fashion Models (specialists who walk designer collections down the runway, often with other duties related to the use of their image);
Hair Stylists & Makeup Artists (generally sub-contracted for the event, with a Lead Stylist providing oversight);
Stage Manager (provides direction and facilitates communication during the show);
Lighting Director (designs and executes a lighting plan);
Audio Director (designs and executes an audio plan);
and an army of experienced assistants in a variety of roles.
Invite A Diverse Audience.
You need to have all of the following:
Fashion Editors (i.e. Press);
Buyers (i.e. Department Stores, Stockists, E-Commerce Entities, etc.);
Influencers (people whose opinion other people value);
Fashion Bloggers (people that might have a day-job outside of the fashion industry, but love fashion and are passionate about sharing with others);
Aficionados (people who love fashion and value fashionable experiences, but do not have a public platform);
General Public (ideally your customers, but also people who might become potential customers).
This audience is one you will need to curate. You’ll need to consider who might be relevant to your brand before sending out invites. What kind of audience might be appropriate for a women’s lingerie show, versus a children’s RTW show? And who do you need to be there so that you can maximize your potential virility?
Execute a Precise Creative Direction.
From the choice in lighting and staging to the selection of models and their styling, consider every aspect of your show as an opportunity to convey brand story. Do you value sustainability? Make it obvious. Choose a venue that contributes to a net-zero carbon footprint. Send your invites via QR Code. Offer vegan appetizers and aperitifs. Invite like-minded collaborators and sponsorships. Whether your budget is $100 dollars or $100 million, no one really cares. They just don’t. Money will never replace creative storytelling. The only thing we care about is your ability to create an overwhelmingly positive experience that’s in alignment with what we know of your brand, while giving us the opportunity to be surprised with something new and refreshingly unexpected. Which leads to…
Inspire, Delight & Surprise.
Until your collection is worn, it’s quite difficult for us to imagine what we might look like in them. And the last thing you want is for that initial impression to remain entirely forgettable. As Marc Jacobs summarized, “You have to inspire. You have to delight. You have to surprise.” In his MasterClass, Jacobs offers this insight:
“[The Fashion Show is] the sum of everything we’ve been thinking about throughout the season. It’s that place that you can transmit not only ideas about texture and clothes, proportions, shape—but also about emotion, about style, about spirit. And it’s also a theatrical experience, which for me, is what inspires dreams, and again, desire.”
There is an inherent theatricality to any public showcase. But the ones you remember are often the ones by which you were most surprised and delighted. Consider Alexander McQueen. Under Lee’s creative direction, and as their budget allowed, their runway experiences began to feature show-stopping moments—one of the most memorable and affecting being Shalom Harlow’s finale during the Spring 1999 Ready-To-Wear event. Part fashion show, part performance art, Lee envisioned a moment that so powerfully connected with audiences that we still talk about it over 20 years later. A nearly perfect zeitgeist, a coming together of our hopes and fears in an era before Facebook that reflected a confluence of fashion and technology like nothing before, and few things since. No one saw it coming. And once seen, we would never forget.
Get Viral.
For the uninitiated, that sounds fairly off-putting. But in marketing terms, viral marketing simply means we need ample incentives and opportunities to share the things you offer us. Consider this. You invite 10,000 people via direct marketing channels and your professional mailing list to attend your show. You get about 300 in response agreeing to attend. That’s a wildly successful response rate, but you are inviting the already initiated, so it’s not unreasonable to expect that kind of return. People want to experience cool events, and if you make it easy for them to attend, they will.
Each person might have an audience of at least 100 others via social channels who know and trust the people you invited, so they are more likely to watch and share the experience you’re creating. And it’s an easy thing to ask attendees to share selfies and other moments to their audiences via hashtags and other searchable tags and keywords. So for the investment it took to gain 300 attendees, you might gross 30,000 people more likely to buy from you that are exposed to your brand. And if you invited the right influencers, that number goes up exponentially.
All of this in addition to the traditional gatekeepers of fashion, i.e., fashion editors (like us), buyers (like Nordstrom), and other members of the press (journalists and photographers, either freelance or corporate). So take advantage of every media outlet and distribution path you can (especially if it’s free; even better if it pays you in ad revenue). No one can buy what you’re selling if they never hear about you.
View of the press pit at Couture & Cars Fashion Show, July 2019.
Fashion shows are an important part of your marketing plan. They involve numerous professionals with a variety of specializations from planning to performance. They create the space you need to suspend our disbelief and show us a world of infinite possibility. They inspire visions of the future and feelings of belonging. They showcase the primary themes, colors, textiles, spirit, and silhouettes of your upcoming collections. They capture and redirect our attention to your upcoming products and services. They provide us a touchpoint and encourage us to share your brand story with others. And most importantly, they breathe life into your designs in ways that could never be duplicated on mannequins, hangers, or racks. And in the best case scenario, they become unforgettable additions to the lexicon of international fashion history.
Because they are The Regular Kind.
But fashion shows aren’t for everyone. And they don’t require a runway or even a building. In fact, they might not require models, depending on the creative direction and distribution methods. And you absolutely should not risk your solvency in order to produce an over-the-top experience.
The first step in planning a fashion show is to ask, “Is this in my company’s best interest?” followed closely by, “Is this in my customer’s best interest?” And remember, the most important thing is never the money you spent. It’s always the story you are telling, and how we can play a part in creating a new and more beautiful world together.
Seattle Fashion Week SS17 Couture Runway Event, October 2016.
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