This November, I got to participate in my first ever fashion show! I was a model for an unique outfit made by designer Villena Viscaria, and a headpiece made by Andrea Dolores. The show was for a Balkan Art Fashion Event, one of the biggest fashion shows on this part of Europe that promotes new and little known fashion designers.
First of, I had no previous experience of anything regarding catwalk or fashion shows. I walk kind of funny because of my weakened cartilage and it takes a lot of effort for me to look at least a bit of elegant whenever I am moving. It is just not coming naturally to me. To make everything scarier, we were going to have a performance that involved a lot of hand gestures and body movements so we could represent Huldra - a seductive forest being from Scandinavian mythology that would trap men who wander forests alone and would not let them go unless they marry her - and sometimes even leading them to a painful death. The designers did their best to represent the beastly nature of each Huldra, as well as add leaves to enhance the forest feeling on the catwalk.
The dresses were also designed to help viewers see the inhumane nature in each model. Every dress had leaves, feathers or some forest elements sewn onto them, while the headpieces and claws that some models wore helped to pull out the beastly elements in all of us.
Thankfully, I wasn't the only inexperienced one, and with the help of other, more well known models, as well as a help from a choreographer, we all did an amazing job and we, I dare to say, made the biggest impression on the entire show. The applause didn't stop even during parts of our performances.
However, nothing good can be made without an astronomical effort. Our designers were dead tired even before the show started. All of us models spent hours getting ready. My body hurt throughout the night because of tight corset that I wasn't used to. After the show, we went on party but most of us were so tired we decided to go home early. And not to mention hours of preparations and work that was invested days before the show.
But, hearing that applause and looking at the pictures afterwards, it was worth every second of it and I hope to participate in future shows as well.