How to organise a No Sweat/Fair Trade fashion show

How to organise a No Sweat/Fair Trade fashion show

By Jill Hall based on experience from Durham Uni Fairtrade Fashion Show

Things to think about:
ï‚· Sources of clothing
ï‚· Funding
ï‚· Steering Committee & Co-ordination of event
ï‚· Venue
ï‚· Sound/lighting/music/choreography
ï‚· Models
ï‚· Rehearsals and where you will rehearse
ï‚· Publicity (posters/tickets/press)
ï‚· Charge on the door
ï‚· Do you want a photographer? Would you like someone to video record it?
ï‚· What else would you like to happen at the show?

Sources of clothing:
ï‚· For the Durham Fashion Show we had a local fairtrade clothing shop through which we were able to source and order clothing. We were able to work closely with the shop manager, who formed part of the planning committee and found this link very useful. However if there is not such a convenient source of clothing the best thing to do is contact the companies directly and let them know what you are doing and they should be able to provide a range of clothing for the event

Fairtrade Clothing companies:
ï‚· Bishopton Trading www.bishoptontrading.co.uk
ï‚· People Tree www.ptree.co.uk
ï‚· Pachacuti www.panamas.co.uk
ï‚· Traidcraft www.traidcraft.co.luk
ï‚· Chandni Chowk www.chandnichowk.co.uk/
ï‚· Hug www.hug.co.uk
ï‚· Namaste www.namaste-uk.com/
ï‚· Gossypium
ï‚· Epona
ï‚· Also look for local designers to be involved and perhaps have a recycled clothing section
ï‚· And you might have a look at Ethical Consumer's guide to alternative clothing: Alternative clothing

Funding
ï‚· Depending on how big you want the event to be funding can be quite important as venue hire/staging
ï‚· The Durham fashion show secured funding from the Co-op Community Dividend Scheme who also provided fairtrade chocolate samples and wine for the evening; Durham Country Council Local Agenda 21; CAFOD (had already given a grant to the Local Global Rangers group to be put towards a fashion show)
 Approach those orgs that have an interest in/support fairtrade already (we also tried the Bodyshop but didn’t hear anything back from them)

Steering Committee & Co-ordination of event
ï‚· Need at least two overall co-ordinators and a strong steering committee group as the organisation takes up a massive amount of time and dedication
ï‚· The Durham fashion show had approx 6 people on the core steering group who met regularly
ï‚· This steering group had two co-ordinators, the person working with the models, the local shop manager, music/choreographer person and others who were interested in just being involved in terms of helping to sort clothes/design programme/posters etc

Venue
ï‚· Durham fashion show was held in Town Hall (we wanted to attract people from all over Durham not just from the Uni and therefore felt that this was a more appropriate venue than the students union)
ï‚· When choosing a venue need to think about staging and seating from start. Also think about how many people you hope to attend? Number of models? Where models will change and enter/exit the stage? Also if you want space to dance/hold stalls/display clothing for people to buy at the end of the show, need to think about spacing for this
ï‚· Staging: worked with local theatre company who had staging contacts and we were able to hire all lighting and catwalk from them

Sound/lighting/music/choreography
 Sound & Lighting – used a local company
 Music – had one specific person who was good with music to select different music for different walks – used world music and in many cases tried to relate it to where the clothes being modelled had been produced.
ï‚· The music person also worked with a student dance group who helped with come of the choreography and also did some dancing on the night

Models
ï‚· Asked friends!
ï‚· Put up posters in local shops and around Uni
ï‚· Local group for Young People, Global Rangers, were involved in the recycled clothing section and they also modelled in the show
ï‚· Students did the majority of modelling (all volunteers) and we also had some people from local community who worked in shop or who were part of local church

Rehearsals and where you will rehearse
 Because we wanted everyone and anyone to be involved we had 41 models in total who were involved. This made it difficult to organise rehearsals, however the nature of the show was that it was a bit of fun so we didn’t really want it to be over rehearsed and slick
ï‚· We started rehearsing 2 weeks before the event however only had one full rehearsal with everyone there the day before!
ï‚· It may be useful to avoid the slight panic that comes with this last minuteness to organise a rehearsal timetable well in advance, also finding places to rehearse can be quite difficult (we luckily were able to use a large church hall attached to the Fairtrade shop)
 Because the walks are generally quite straightforward they don’t really take that long to put together, it is mainly the timing and slotting in with the music that takes the longest time to get right

Publicity (posters/tickets/press)
ï‚· Posters went up all around Durham and the University
ï‚· Put article on student website
ï‚· Fly posters
ï‚· Email lists
ï‚· Sold tickets from the fairtrade shop in advance and also on the night
ï‚· Got a couple of articles in local press
ï‚· Had one person to liaise/deal with press and he also sent out press releases to them which was useful
 Tickets £3.50 concessions £5 adults (the cost of tickets were quite high however we found it was necessary to cover our costs, the evening also included lots of other events which are discussed below)

What else would you like to happen at the show?
ï‚· At the Durham fashion show we wanted to make it more than a fashion show so had a samba band in the court yard before the show started; stalls at the start and end of the show; fairtrade goodie bags; fairtrtade wine/juice and cocktail tasting; an opportunity to buy clothes at the end and a DJ and belly dancer once the show had ended in the main hall
 It is quite good to have people who are willing to sell clothes on the night (however this worked well in Durham because of the link with the shop however it may work differently if you are sourcing straight from the company –would need to check this out)

Finally…
The most significant costs of the show were the venue, staging and also the hire of a media company who filmed the event and did some brilliant background visuals for the show, however I am sure that there are some more cost effective ways round these issues.