Robbie Tomkins on working at Fashion Week
By Sophie Nutt | 25 April 2019 | Feature, Tech Talk
As another London Fashion Week (LFW) has disappeared into a cloud of mayhem, anxiety, elation and relief, I wanted to shed a little light on how it all works.
LFW offers an amazing opportunity to experience one element of working as a session stylist. Firstly, the week founded in 1984 by the British Fashion Council isn’t really a week at all. It actually runs over a long weekend, usually from a Thursday evening to a Tuesday. The autumn/winter collections are shown in February for that forthcoming season and the spring/summer collections are shown in September for the following year, so they essentially run six months ahead.
The ‘big four’ shows include New York, London, Milan and Paris, and they run in that order. The haute couture shows take place in January and July each year and see some more off-the-wall creations. Haute couture, meaning ‘high sewing’ or ‘high fashion’ in French, is the creation of custom-fitted clothing, where the garments are usually constructed by hand from start to finish.
I’m sure anyone who has worked at Fashion Week for a few seasons will agree that you can have both the best time of your life – or be driven close to tears. This year, however, I was lucky enough to be invited to lead the team for the House of Holland show by one of my favourite brands, OPI. From start to finish, the experience was an absolute joy. The production team ran like a well-oiled machine and I led a super talented team that totally smashed it. Meeting Henry Holland was a dream and his shows are known for including a nail ‘look’. Henry really made me feel like a valued part of the creative process and, together with Syd Hayes on hair and Zoe Taylor on make-up, we created a cohesive look that I think really popped on the catwalk.
I think its also really important to talk about the knocks you sometimes experience at Fashion Week. For each show, the creative team attend what’s called a ‘test’: this is where you work with the designer and a stylist to create and agree on the look for the runway. After securing a fantastic team for a show and a product sponsor, my first assistant, Rebecca Orme, and I arrived at the ‘test’ the day before the show to discover the stylist had decided to put all the models in black latex gloves. Yes, it did sting a little bit and I’m increasingly starting to understand that nothing is set in stone until the model’s heel hits the runway!
I’m still relatively new to Fashion Week and often get anxious and stressed around it. For the first time, I picked up the phone and asked for help from fellow session techs, Michelle Humphrey and Michelle Class. When I said I was struggling and feeling anxious, they shared that they often felt the same. They both kindly listened to me, offered their advice on how to cope with the mayhem and also some game changing shortcuts for painting 35 sets of press-on nails in less than 24 hours. In the past, I’ve felt that techs can be strangely guarded around LFW but it turns out, if you just ask for help, you may be surprised.
Follow Robbie’s session nail journey on Twitter & Instagram. and check out his columns in Scratch magazine throughout 2019.