As an FIT student I was chosen to volunteer at Bridal Market Week...
FIT has a strong name in the industry and many groups ask for students help
(This was a little while ago but I finally got the pictures off my phone)
Basically market week is when the manufacturers from different companies get together and then buyers from retail stores & other places come though and select the designs they want to carry. Each company has it's own little "booth".
It was so nice, all white with chandeliers everywhere!
This was our cute little room:
Our dresses:
(Each of the dresses is in alphabetical order, I had to keep them that way,
believe me I still know all the names!)
There's a lot of rules for wedding couture, like in order for your store to carry the line of dresses I worked with, Alyne by Rivini, you have to be quite a far distance from any other boutique carrying the line already.
There were some buyers that wanted to buy the designs but were just starting out and another store near them had a contract with us. That's one of the first questions the buyers ask, who else in their area is carrying our line.
The next question is what the top orders are so they can know what everyone else has and what sells the best. It was really great to be in the real atmosphere and see the industry outside of the textbook. Everything always makes better sense to me when I learn it hands on, I'm so glad FIT has these opportunities.
I received a fancy name tag and began to work! It says Toronto because the designer is from Toronto, but models asked me ALL DAY if that's where I was from, haha.
There was 2 of us working the Alyene collection, our collection was displayed as a fashion show, we started from Annabelle to Zoe (names of the dresses) whenever a new buyer came.
It was fast-paced and there were many things to keep track of, some dresses had jackets, others belts, certain shoes, or ties on the side. All the dresses were HUGE, the big poofy kind that makes you feel like a princess. Wedding dresses have a lot of fabric so they're really heavy by the end my arms had a good toning workout going on. And being as short as I am I needed to raise the dresses so high above my head just to walk them back to the garment racks where we were displaying them. Since I was the key person, it was my fault if something didn't have a belt or jacket, and it definitely happened a few times but we kept a pretty good show going!
We had to work completely in sync in order to keep up though, I brought dresses unzipped them, took the previous dress off the model and hung it in time for the second model to come in and put the dress I unzipped on. There was definitely no time to send a quick text or even get a sip of water. And it was so crammed....we had to fit 4 people and 2 huge wedding dresses in 2/3's of this little closet like room...
And the walls weren't every stable, one of the models was insane and she literally fell over and her arm went right through the wall....awkward. I had heard she spilled coffee on one of the dresses the day before as well, oh dear.
Kyra, one of our models. She was SO nice:
We did get a nice break time on Monday because it was the last day so it slowed down a little, I roamed to see the other designers...
There were all kinds of accessories too! Tiaras, necklaces, veils, etc.
Matthew Williamson design, such intricate beading!
There's a lot wedding companies that have bridesmaid and prom dresses as well:
And if you really want, they offer wedding pantsuits. New trend? I'm not so sure about that...
The people were so glamourous and definitely stepped the fashion up to attend. We had major buyers visit us, like the buyers from Kleinfeld NYC, the store in Say Yes to The Dress :)
The funniest part was afterwards I talked to Dana and she told me all the buyers that had come to the collection kept talking about my shoes: They kept saying how cute it was to just see my little red shoes moving around behind the curtain. They were all so shocked I had made them myself a few nights before, gotcha ;)
