Behind the scenes of organising an annual fashion event

As a part of my foundation course, Fashion Buying, Styling & Visual Merchandising (FIP) . An annual event take place every March called the Fashion Fiesta. We worked as a class group to plan this event. (approx 20 of us) The Fashion Fiesta happens every single year so we started to plan it in early January. The event showcases garments made by four fashion courses and the hair and makeup creations by the beauty students. The idea of the Fashion Fiesta first arose in 2008 and has been running ever since. The aim of the event is to create an audience and show the public what great courses Galway Technical Institute offers and it raises money for charities.

A famous influencer is always picked the be the MC, most recent MC is Brendan Courtney, co-finder of Lennon Courtney, clothing line. Every year the event is based around a theme, past themes include, circus & mascaraed ball. For ours we chose Culture Clash, this really suited well as Galway was named the City of Culture for 2020, so what a better way to celebrate. Not only did my group have to organise and plan the event we also made recycled garments for the event. I will talk about mine a bit later on.

What I learned from co-operating to run this event was that its not just the event there was so much more planning to do, like, - who to have as the MC, the location, the date, the models, the charity, model castings and so much more.

I took on the role of picking the hair and makeup, this was a fun role and I got to communicate with the beauty students about how I wanted the looks. The location was the most amazing thing to sort out, last year it took place in the institute. But we wanted ours to be one to remember. So we chose The G Hotel, a hotel that was designed by the Irish milliner, Philip Tracey.

Such a luxurious location it was crazy that we actually got the chance to hold it there.

Next on the list was to get someone good to host the event, we chose the 2014 winner of the Rose of Tralee, Maria Walsh. So not only did we have an amazing location, but we had a famous host too. So her role was to announce all the garments for the duration of she show.

Getting onto the exciting part, which went on for a few months, our class group had to design garments for the show, and all other garments were supplied by the design classes. Our brief suggested that we had to make recycled garments. So many ideas were flowing in the class, it took me a while to actually decide on my idea. I was took between plastic bottles & Nespresso capsules. I ended up choosing plastic bottles, because i would've needed 10000 nespresso capsules, & I'd probably still be absolutely high as a kite.

But I didn't just decide on the same olde original idea of plain bottles, I cut the bottles in half, then cut them in the shape of pettles & painted them. I then used fishing wire to attach them to an old dress I never wore.

We got to shoot the images in the photography studio & collaborated with a photographer, it was all so professional & cool.

The dress was 50's retro inspired. Orla Kiely was one of my main influences for this project. I styled with with round mirrored sunnies, and royal blue heels, to add that Retro colour pop.

Another exciting design role which we were involved in, was creating the promotional poster for the event. The cover photo (up top) was the winner, and it was stuck all over the city. This was a really fun part of the process.

The GTI fashion fiesta happens every single year without a doubt. And its a great event to be both involved in & attend. My favourite part of the whole process was definitely the day of the event, being able to see the whole thing happen knowing that we were the ones who organised it. Although I didn't get to see much of the event, as I would behind the scenes in the dressing room But knowing that we organised it & it was all for such a great charity was simply the best feeling ever.

Some more of the designs by students in my class.

G x