480 hours of fashion

I've kept it under wraps until now but I'll finally tell you what I was up to last week, and what an exciting week it was! I was working at the catwalk fashion shows based in Nottingham called 48 hours of fashion, although it was probably the longest week of my life (as the title suggests) because the work was quite grueling and tiring. When I offered to work it, I assumed I'd be working the days of the actual event and just running lights and schedules and things backwards and forwards but I got to be much more involved. I (and all the other volunteers, who were all uni students so I was the odd one out) got to go out and choose the outfits based on SS/15 trends (although I take no credit for the few outfits that were ugly), go and speak to all 60 retailers who were involved about dropping their clothes off at the marquee in the square and signing them over to us, sign in all the clothes when they arrived, organise them first by retailer and then by chosen outfits and then by model, and then dress the models. I have to say that watching male models undress for a few days wasn't the worst job in the world.

When the 10 London-based models arrived on Thursday morning, we were assigned to one to dress. Although it would've been fun to work with a male model, I'm so glad I got the model I did (the blonde one wearing the hat in that first photo) - she was the nicest, most genuine and down to earth person ever and she thanked me every time I got her ready (which I've just worked out was 154 times) which most of them didn't. She also lacked the bitchiness or diva-esque quality that a couple of the girls had and we had a laugh together when she got stuck in things a couple of times. I also managed to be her only dresser through the whole event whereas every other model had two people for at least a portion of it - we obviously had a system that worked well so we didn't need another person. A system that no-one else seemed to get because when someone covered me so that I could actually watch the show on the last day, she sent her out in the wrong pair of shoes for one of the outfits and my model, Sophie, admitted that she had panicked without me even though she never panics. She's done some pretty cool stuff too - paris fashion week, new york fashion week and dolce and gabbana shoots. And just before all the models headed home, she gave me a big hug and thanked me and wished me luck with everything in the future which I thought was so sweet. The models-are-stuck-up stereotype couldn't be less true, they were all really lovely and always bouncing around and rehearsing their dances (they were all dancer models). Another thing that surprised me is how much they eat! Obviously it's all super healthy but they were literally eating every hour or two!

After a day of running around town speaking to retailers for 9 hours straight, I thought converse were the wise choice and then immediately regretted it once I got to the marquee. Even though the models weren't especially tall (Sophie was 5'8 according to her model profile; only an inch taller than me) but standing next to all of them in flat shoes made me feel like some kind of elf or dwarf. I did like the rest of my outfit though - printed skorts from river island and my 'and today I'm wearing' top with a cute peter pan collar, also from river island. Because of the blue detail on the skorts, I did consider wearing my collarless blue coat but it didn't look right at all so I opted for my primark camel coat instead.

After hating the flat shoe experience, I switched back to heels the next day - especially since being a dresser doesn't involve much walking, in fact it involves a lot of standing in exactly the same place and getting ready for your models next outfit change. It also involved slut-dropping every 2 minutes to take shoes off and put shoes on again. Those shoes were the bane of my life as well, they were so fiddly and annoying to get on and off. Seriously I feel like I know the clothes on that rail better than I know the ones in my own wardrobe, I've been looking at them literally all week non-stop; de-tagging them and hanging them up and unbuttoning and unzipping them ready for Sophie to wear. When I wasn't looking at that rail though, I was looking at my own and choosing my OOTD - this was my final one of the week and it's probably one of my favourites in my wardrobe. This embellished collar river island top is a gorgeous colour and a gorgeous fabric and I love wearing it with these snake print shorts (also river island) because I think the cut and style of each work well together. I added a clashing coat in the form of this checked new look one and then finished with new look chunky heels because I couldn't cope in flats again. I completed the outfit with Velvet teddy lipstick and Michael Kors watch.

After a long week, I was also reunited once more with my bestie Laura who's at uni in Sheffield. We had a really nice dinner-and-cocktail night at chiquitos, which I think I'd earned after all my hard-work and long hours (I was the first there every morning and the last to leave each night). Frozen daiquiris have always been a favourite of mine but I've never had a passion fruit one before and oh my god it's so good! I think passion fruit is the winning flavour for any top class cocktail.

Something new that I've never done before - YouTube! Don't worry, I don't have grand dreams of becoming the next Zoella, mainly because I don't like the way my voice sounds on videos (although the possibility of thousands of pounds worth of advertising does sound kindof appealing). It's also something I won't be attempting again because it turns out that YouTube is a lot of hassle and it's taken me all week to upload these videos! (it turns out I needed to verify my account before it would let me upload a video longer than 15 minutes which I didn't know). No, my reason for YouTube is because my dad sneakily videoed the whole show (it's about 25 minutes long) and so the 3.99 GB video slightly went over the 100 MB that blogger allows and I had to go with a different option. The show is split into 6 different scenes that are based on places or events around Nottingham and there's lots of dancing and beautiful clothes and beautiful models. When I got to watch the show, I saw all the women in the marquee looking lustily at the male models and couldn't help but smile to myself. If only they knew that none of them were their type; they were all each other's type. Johnny was the funniest one because he looks like the most manly and rugged guy ever - dark hair and a strong jaw and a designer beard and tattoo sleeves, when in actual fact I've never met anyone more openly gay and camp, who was mega loud and had the strongest Irish accent ever. He was actually hilarious and although he looked dark and smoldering on stage, the second he went through the curtain into backstage, he was running around throwing beach balls in the air saying 'you hear that applause? That's all for me! Because I'm fabulous!'. The show's split into two videos and it's definitely worth a watch, even though it is quite long. Happy YouTubing!

Watch part 1 here

Watch part 2 here