Archive for November 2011
Benefit Auction Item Idea – New York Fashion Week Tickets
One unique item worth including in your benefit auction (silent or live, but I’ve always sold it in the live) are tickets to New York City’s Fashion Week.
Fashionistas know that Fashion Week happens twice a year – once in the spring (March) to showcase fall fashions, and again in the fall (September) to showcase spring fashions. The event is held in several cities around the world (Paris, Milan, London, etc.), but New York seems to be the destination for our domestic audiences. In our auctions, the tickets sell for a few thousand dollars, without hotel or transportation attached.
Why are these tickets “hot?” And how do you get them?
Let’s begin by describing the event itself.
Designers can rent space at specific venues in New York to showcase their collections. Because hosting a show is expensive, not all designers have the cash required to produce a show. For instance, a new designer might opt to only show in Paris’ Fashion Week, but a larger fashion house might have a show in each city.
From morning until night, a venue can be busy hosting shows. A lesser-known designer might be in the tent in the morning. Later that day, a well-known icon could be hosting in that same space.
When I’ve sold tickets to Fashion Week, I am not selling tickets to every runway show scheduled throughout the week. Either I am selling tickets to a specific show (for instance, the Badgley Mischka show), or I’m selling tickets to a specific show which has yet to be decided by the donor of the tickets.
The tickets are popular because many ‘average’ people would never be able to attend this type of event, or wouldn’t think to investigate how they could attend. In our minds, Fashion Week lives in the domain of the rich and famous, where the paparazzi cameras are constantly flashing, the models arrive breathlessly from their last job, and celebrities are whisked inside to sit in front row seats. The music is intense, the excitement is high, and the vibe that is New York is in the air.
And honestly, that description is pretty accurate. Even the average New Yorker can’t easily obtain tickets.
So with that information as your backdrop, imagine that you — a stay-at-home Mom, a professional woman wanting to treat yourself, an adventurous gal with some extra cash — have the opportunity to buy two tickets at your fundraising auction to attend this event.
Who wouldn’t want to go!? What a great trip for two best friends, or a memorable Mother-Daughter experience.
Now that you’re eager to pack your bags, let’s talk about securing tickets.
As always, work your connections.
The donations I’ve seen have come from department stores. Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, Bloomingdales … whatever department store serves your city is a good target. Buyers from those stores attend Fashion Week seeking trends and ideas.
Ask the best dressed woman on your auction committee where she shops. If she’s spending money in a specific department store, that’s the best place to begin. For instance, one of my client’s volunteers consistently used free personal shopping services at a local department store. She shared with her personal shopper that she wanted to secure tickets to Fashion Week for her charitable auction, and she was connected to the right person.
Be advised that because of the fluidity of the Fashion Week schedule, the purchasers of the tickets may not know until a week or so prior as to which day a specific show will be held. It’s best to let guests know that, “Fashion Week is September XX through XX, and the show will occur on one of those days.”
Because your auction is taking place months in advance of Fashion Week, most guests don’t seem to mind the ambiguity. The reality is that if your auction is in March, and the Fashion Week tickets are for September, even the organizers of New York’s Fashion Week don’t yet know which designers will be appearing.
My prediction is that this will be one of the most talked-about, desirable items in your auction line-up!
All About Fashion and Fashion Week
Fashion is the general style or custom of clothing worn at any given time. The word “fashion” comes from the years when people described a woman who was well dressed as a “fashion plate”.
Whether or not it had a name, fashion has always been important to women. Now it seems to be almost as important to men. Beau Brummell is probably the most well known and talked about male fashion plate in history. His colorful clothing and accessories were copied by men all over Europe.
Couturiers with famous names such as Worth, Dior, Balenciaga, Chanel had famous fashion houses in Paris. These were the haute couture designers that every other fashion designer since has aspired to become. In spite of Prêt a Porter (French for ready made or off the rack) the world still looks to Paris first when fashion is concerned. Today, although fashion designers and models come from all over the world, fashion week in Paris is still the most exciting event of the year.
Fashion changes nearly instantly. Each season welcomes in a different style, color, hem length, and designer. Today the person who follows fashion like a slave is called a fashionista. Some fashionistas look ridiculous in the new styles but they wear them anyway.
The media is very important to fashion and can rightly take credit for the spread of each new style and trend over the world map. Fashion blogs are the newest manner of communicating the newest fashion. Prior to blogs there were fashion web sites, columns in newspapers and magazines, fashion magazines. One of the most famous fashion magazines is Vogue. It was founded in 1892 and it is the longest lasting fashion magazine in the world with versions being published in England, France, Italy, Germany and other countries. Vogue’s influence grew after W.W. II. Ready to wear designers and perfume companies were their largest advertisers. In the 50′, 60′s 70′s television was featured on television shows such as Today and other morning shows.
A few years ago, Project Runway became one of the most watched reality shows on television. Each season a new designer is launched with his/her own fashion line. The show is sponsored by a well known department store, hair care company, and make-up company. The judges are a model, a fashion magazine editor, a famous designer and a weekly guest. This program watches a group of people who want to become fashion designers go through each stage of the competition. At the end, the three remaining designers compete with a line they put together in a month or two. This is presented at Mercedes Benz fashion week in Bryant Park, N.Y. The winner gets a large check to work at producing his/her own line which will be carried at the major department store.
Fashion Week is a big industry event. There is one held in each of the large fashion capitals. This week the biggest fashion houses and designers display their newest designs and styles. There is a fashion week in Paris, Milan, London, and New York. These weeks occur twice a year for autumn/winter fashions and spring/summer fashions. They are held many months in advance so that the buyers and the magazine editors can see the designs prior to ordering them for their venue. The first week of women’s wear is New York followed by London, Milan and Paris. The men’s wear lines are shown in between in Milan.
Fashion weeks are also held in other places for specific types of clothing such as swim wear and cruise wear in Miami. In fact, there are fashion weeks in many U.S. cities for several different types of clothing. You can probably find an alphabetical listing online if you want to go to one.
Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week
The Wills India Fashion Week in New Delhi has successfully ended in a more sizzling style for spring summer. It has all that glamour and glitz, demanded by London, Paris and New York fashion Weeks. More than 70 fashion designers from around the country participated in the Fashion Week showing their collections worn by 40 models. The Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week Spring-Summer Showcase is another ‘first’ by the FDCI which serves as a platform to promote ‘The Business of Fashion’ and facilitate interaction between designers and buyers in India and internationally.
This is the first time since its inception six years ago that the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week was presented on an international format to cover the two seasonal market segments – Autumn-Winter and Spring-Summer. As a result, close to 75 of India’s best designers were able to present their Spring-Summer Pr