[The following is a guest post by Polina Raygorodskaya of Polina Fashion. Polina Fashion LLC is a New York-based fashion PR and marketing firm that also specializes in live events, fashion shows, and photo shoot production.  © 2009 Polina Fashion LLC, All rights reserved. info[at]polinafashion.com]

Here are ten tips you, as a new designer can leverage on your own.

Jagnje the Perfection by Marta L. Lamovšek

10. Do Your Research

Know what the magazines you are pitching to write about, who their audience is, and make sure your pitches coincide with the type of content they normally write. Most magazines have Editorial Calendars available which tell what each month’s issue will be about for the year. When contacting a reporter, target pitches for the month’s issue that is relevant to your subject matter. If in March there is a special on Spring Fashion try to pitch (several months in advance) to editors for that particular issue. Do not waste editor’s times with pitches that are irrelevant to what they write about because this makes you look careless and unprofessional.

9. Think outside the box

Reporters are constantly receiving pitches so when coming up with a pitch keep in mind that they probably have already heard something like it. So what will make your pitch stand out? Something atypical, something that you have not seen in the news before, or something that would be of great interest to the general public. Sell people on its uniqueness, the qualities or attributes that you have that NO ONE else has (these should also be apparent in your live events and fashion shows). If you don’t have those qualities you may need to reconsider your business model.

8. Play the Part

You only get one first impression so make it a good one. Your website, images, look book, and press materials should be clean and professional. If they do not pass that test then do not start contacting press and buyers until they are or you can give yourself a bad image regardless of the actual quality of your line. You want to be the fashion world’s next craze – so play the part. If you’ve spent thousands on a great new website, have your contact email in the format of yourname@yourcompany.com and not at a generic Yahoo or Gmail account.

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