A PR Gentleman’s FW12 Fashion Week Diary: Native Son Presentation

3 Days to Fashion Week

8:00 AM

• Launch an all out assault pitching menswear line, NATIVE SON, a new client that I picked up the previous Friday night, to editors.  Includes sending out invites to their New York Fashion Week show just days away and pitching the collection preview, short film based on the collection’s inspiration and their new collaboration with Raleigh Denim.
• Set up the invite and send it out to my lists. Since this is a presentation and not a seated runway show I can be much less restrictive of who can attend aka pretty much anyone that RSVP’s.

9:00 AM

• Invites sent to over 2000 editors, writers, bloggers and photogs who would potentially be in town for the shows.

9:05 AM

• RSVP’s start pouring in. Ignore them and move on to pitching exclusives. I’m looking to generate pre-show buzz so obviously, long-leads are out of the question at this point. I seek out 3 of the top menswear blogs and shoot over personal emails.

10:00 AM

• RSVPs continue… AHH. Make some tea; time for a little boost. Check non-RSVP emails and respond to client requests. Also, catch up on the news.
• Get a text from an editor friend to meet for breakfast @ The Mercer. We discuss Love, Life and Fashion (of course).  Models passing by the window distract me throughout the meal. Ahh the beauty of fashion week comes to life before my very eyes.

12:30 PM

• I cab it back to my office aka apartment for a meeting with the team to discuss logistics of the Native Son show and after-party. The staffing needs will be very light and consist of a couple people at check-in. I will be ensuring the top editors attend and have what they need to cover the show. I will also be setting up on-site interviews with the designer. Things are running smoothly so far.
• I have to say that I love presentations, and prefer them to runway shows because they are so easy to manage. People will attend throughout the hour so there aren’t seating issues and definitely no carrying seating charts across town, on the subway like fab publicist @OscarPRgirl. I add that if you aren’t following her tweets you are truly missing out on a brilliant and witty fashion insider’s POV.

3:00 PM

• Meet with the designer to go over the run of show and staffing needs. We also discuss the after-party, which is usually an after-thought for most designers. They leave it up to their teams and just go with the flow.

5:00 PM

• Returned to the office and confirmed a venue called STASH that I had on hold for our party.
• Everything is coming together very fast so at this point the office turns back into my apartment and I can start to relax a bit… or at least try. I have friends in town from Paris so of course they want to go out. I abide. We set dinner plans and head out for a bit.

2 Days Until the Show

8:00 AM

• RSVP’s and pre-show coverage confirmations.

11:00 AM

• Getting pretty hungry and decide to make breakfast. I make a bomb frittata, just ask anyone I’ve made brekkie for and they will tell you.
• Received two out of three confirmations that my pre-show stories are going to run. This is very good news for a publicist; especially working on such short notice.

Day before the Show

10:00 AM

• Got to sleep in a little today aka woke up at 10. The glory of working freelance is that you basically wake up in your office. Today focused on gathering more RSVP’s and sending out confirmations. Even though I have someone else building the list it is imperative to my sanity that I go through every email myself and ensure that not one name has been missed. This takes all day and is extremely inefficient but I must do it. Once that is complete I set up the list in my email program and send them out.
• With confirmations sent I need to scan the list and see what important editors have not RSVP’d yet so I can send them personal emails, text messages, etc to get them to confirm. Everyone is extremely busy so its easy to overlook an email or two.

Welcome to Thursday, aka Show Day

Thursday

8:00 AM

• Wake up to a few dozen more RSVPs.

2:00PM

• PR team arrival at venue

4:00 PM

• Doors… but we’re not opening until we have at least 50 people waiting… only takes a few mins but we hold the doors until 10 after anyway. I’m very happy this doesn’t take very long to happen. Shows are expected to be late but I prefer to run on-time. Shows can be late for an array of reasons such as late models or waiting on a few specific editors to arrive. In this case everyone was on-time.

Here are a few highlights from backstage…

7:00 PM

• Received the show photos from the house photographer and created the post show recap that I sent out to over 5000 international press contacts. I then scanned the internet for some fresh coverage and sent it off to the team.

8:00 PM

• Rush off to MILK MADE @ Milk Studios in the Meatpacking District for Libertine, whose creative director, Johnson Hartig, is an old friend. His collections are always the talk of the town and this was the first time I would be able to make his show since he started showing again in NYC. We arrive around 8:30 and it’s a complete zoo, inside and out. I literally felt like I was being herded in, but instead of cows it was fashionista’s and socialites.

Day 5 – Native Son After-party

• Most people will ask why we chose to do the after party the day after the show and not the night of. We’ll, technically it’s still an after party so it shouldn’t matter, but we opted for the day after because of an early morning media call with the designer (oh an  the venue wasn’t available anyway!)
• Since the invites were sent out with the show photo’s last night I already have about 1000 RSVPs for the after party in my inbox so I needed to get cracking on the list.
• Half way through the day I decided to leave RSVP hell and head back to Lincoln Center to see celebrated fur accessories designer Brandon Sun’s presentation. As I walked in, Rick Genest aka “Zombie Boy” from last season’s Thierry Mugler campaign, walked past me… wait what? Beautiful furs surround me and Rick Genest is just hanging out decked in leather and studs from head to toe. What an interesting juxtaposition.

Media Coverage

Really pleased with the amount of coverage by sites like View of Fashion, Por Homme, HypeBeast, Selectism, and of course, GQ, for the show.