SHOWTIME: Backstage at David Jones Winter Launch 2005

Helen Lee - March 15 2005

Ok ok, I could have ranted on for pages about it. Trying to make the whole backstage scene seem amazingly glamorous, but truth be told it can be so exhaustingly dull. There I said it, dull. So I'll keep it as short as I possibly can.

It all began at about 10am when I walked into the backstage area on the women's fashion floor in the glam department store, David Jones. Models arrived about half an hour to an hour after the dressers and the rest of the backstage crew had. I was assigned to dress Sterling, and by 11am when she hadn't shown up and rehearsals were about to start I was starting to worry that if she didn't show up I would have had to walk on the catwalk holding her outfit like I had to last season when Pia arrived late. But thankfully Carlie arrived to take the place of Sterling (for reasons I never was told - nor did I ask) and she quickly hopped into the outfit and everything was fine.

By fine I mean that the first rehearsal took about an hour and a half, so most of us dressers were sitting around gossiping about the upcoming Melbourne Fashion Festival and some of the newer models around. By this time I had flicked through Carlie's outfits, which consisted of a cute Zimmermann outfit of pants, leopard print cross over top and a pink sequined bolero and yuck pink buckle shoes; a Carlson outfit of a sleeveless red 'thing', black velvet aline skirt, yucky spider like earrings, fishnet tights and cute round toe pumps; a Collette Dinnigan cream halter neck dress with diamante and shell detail and matching sequined Collette Dinnigan shoes; a Eastern Pearson cream coloured velvet dress and with a cute little cream coloured blouse and t-bar pointy toed shoes. She did have a Collette Dinnigan finale outfit which was a sequined mini and matching halter neck top, but then they decided that Elke should have that outfit. Which was fine by me, one less outfit to worry about!

After the first rehearsal it was a quick half hour break to grab lunch, then another two rehearsals followed by a slightly longer break before it was hair and make up time for the models and ironing and steaming time for the dressers. Thankfully Carlie didn't have anything that needed to be pressed or steamed, so I was sitting around gossiping with Michelle who was dressing model popular model, Tanya G, next to me. Later models sprawled themselves on the floor with us and we all sat around chatting and wishing the show would hurry up and start. I also found out that Carlie was only 15 (and such a sweetheart), another model was upset that her husband (yes, she's married at the ripe age of 19) won't be coming to Australia for another few weeks and that Carmen Electra was hitting on a guy (while drunk ofcourse) at the Australian MTV Awards. I love backstage girly chatter.

When hair and make up was finally done we got to survey what the Lancóme beauty team had done with the make up. Which consisted of a light base, dark eyeliner and mascara with green-blue eye shadow that made their eyes seem bigger and bluer. Nothing stand out, but it was topped off with some brushes of bronzer and Lancóme Juicy Tubes for that high gloss shine. The model's hair was a simple sleeked back bun with fly away bits, simple and relatively fuss free.

A few hours later first outfits were called and it was finally show time. By this time everyone was very exhausted and wishing the show would start. And when it finally did (with model's wondering around for about 15 minutes in their first outfits) we were all ecstatic! Half an hour later I was hanging everything back on their hangers and on my way home. I was too tired to stick around for the after party, after all I had been at David Jones for about 10 hours!!

P.S. I did witness a bit of a hissy fit during the show... thrown by a big international Aussie model. It was nothing major though.