Fashion Designers: 5 Affordable and Alternative Ideas for Showcasing Your Fashion Collections!

The runways of NY Fashion Week are the pinnacle of all things glamorous and can turn fashion designers into industry darlings. However, it is also a very costly production and may not be the best place for a new designer to launch their line. As much as I love, love, love seeing shows during Fashion Week, I don't recommend that new designers spend that kind of money to get their designs seen so early in their careers. This post will give you ideas for alternative ways to showcase your fashion line during Fashion Week (or any time of year!).

Putting together a Fashion Week runway show can be very expensive. It costs at least $30k to show at NY Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. You need to have proper funding to pay for the: space, models, hair, makeup, set design, lighting, photographers, videographers, plus the cost of your actual designs, among other things. In my opinion, new designers shouldn't be doing runways shows until they are making enough money to sustain normal business activities plus the cost of putting together a Fashion Week Runway Shows.

Fashion Week Runway Shows are the best platform for established leaders in fashion innovation. There are over 100 shows in NY during Fashion Week and it's hard for Fashion Editors and Buyers to make it to all of the well-known designer runway shows. If you are able to hold your fashion event close to where the actual runway shows are taking place, it makes it easier for editors and buyers to stop in and attend.

Wherever you decide to have your fashion show, be sure to have someone videotape it so you can post it on your website and blog (and so the fashion bloggers can do the same thing for you!). Live video-streaming is also an excellent option for your fans and clients who live out of town but still want to support you and "be a part" of your fashion show!

Here are a few ideas that can be used for a more cost-effective fashion presentation:

1. Do a fashion installation in a hotel suite. You can have models standing in the room that's put together like a chic fashion shoot set wearing your most exciting and show-stopping designs for editors and buyers to walk around and see.

2. Throw a cocktail party at a popular local lounge that features a few models in your designs to launch your line. You can invite lots of friends, family, buyers, bloggers, local boutique owners and press to attend and you will also have some of the location's regular foot traffic to rely on.

3. Are you an early-bird? Consider hosting a small invite-only breakfast buffet at a cute local restaurant where you can do a fashion show. Both women and men love free food and the fact that it comes with entertainment (your fashion show) is an added bonus for them!

4. Is there a great neighborhood garden, park or local museum that you could negotiate using as a space to showcase your designs?

5. Many colleges have fashion shows, especially around homecoming time. Could this be another way for you to get your designs seen?

Fashion - The Social Phenomena

Fashions are social phenomena common to many fields of human activity and thinking. Fashion houses and their associated fashion designers, as well as high-status consumers (including celebrities), appear to have some role in determining the rates and directions of fashion change. Fashion is in the sky, in the street; fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening. Fashion is a field dominated by women and primarily meant to serve women.

Fashion

Men's fashions largely derived from military models, and changes in a European male silhouette are galvanized in theatres of European war, where gentleman officers had opportunities to make notes of foreign styles: an example is the "Steinkirk" cravat or necktie. The pace of change picked up in the 1780s with the increased publication of French engravings that showed the latest Paris styles; though there had been distribution of dressed dolls from France as patterns since the sixteenth century, and Abraham Bosse had produced engravings of fashion from the 1620s.

Although tailors and dressmakers were no doubt responsible for many innovations before, and the textile industry certainly led many trends, the History of fashion design is normally taken to date from 1858, when the English-born Charles Frederick Worth opened the first true haute couture house in Paris. Since then the professional designer has become a progressively more dominant figure, despite the origins of many fashions in street fashion.

A stylist is either a person who co-ordinates the clothes, jewelry, and accessories used in fashion photographs and catwalk shows or a kind of designer whose designs are based on existing things, trends, and designers collections. A buyer is responsible for ordering stocks of clothes for shops, particularly the larger chain stores. An illustrator draws and paints clothes for commercial use. Talented illustrators--among them Paul Iribe, George Lepape and George Barbier--drew exquisite fashion plates for these publications, which covered the most recent developments in fashion and beauty. A model models clothes at fashion shows or for photographs. A photographer photographs the clothes on fashion models for use in magazines, newspapers, or adverts.

Season

Fashion design differs from costume design due to its core product having a built in obsolescence usually of one to two seasons. A season is defined as either autumn/winter or spring/summer. Ready-to-wear collections are usually presented by fashion houses each season during a period known as Fashion Week. They often wait around a season to make sure a style is going to catch on before producing their own versions of the original look. To do this, they look at what the fashion directions have been in previous seasons, keep an eye on what others in the fashion business are doing, and read fashion forecasting magazines. They also rely on knowledge of their own customers to see which styles succeeded and which were less popular in past seasons.

Fashions may vary significantly within a society according to age, social class, generation, occupation and geography as well as over time.

How I Tripled My Design Business

Do you want to know the biggest secret to increasing your home fashions business? It's sending a regular e-mail newsletter - an article or simple tip that your potential clients will find useful. If you can write an e-mail, you can dramatically increase your success.

Writing an e-mail newsletter helps you:

Achieve expert status

Increase sales

Gain new clients

Improve customer relations

Get more referrals

Make More Money!

It's true. Writing just one simple e-mail, as little as twice a month, can do all that for you. But here is the challenge: It has to be done right, or you won't see these spectacular results. It took me several years - and thousands of dollars - to learn the most effective way to launch a successful e-mail newsletter campaign. And within one year of doing it the right way, my business tripled!

Instead of making you spend all that time and money, I'm going to list some basic tips to assure that your e-mail newsletter helps boost your business quickly. (Isn't that nice of me?)

• Send your newsletters regularly. Once a month is okay; twice a month is better. Weekly mailings are ideal, but the most important aspect of a successful e-mail newsletter is being regular. Stick to a schedule!

• The main part of your newsletter - your article or tip - needs to be useful information for the reader. You should certainly put in some promotion about your company, but keep this to about 20 percent of the entire newsletter. Any more than that will turn off readers and cause deletes and un-subscribes.

• Use an e-mail service provider. If you try to manage your e-mail newsletters from your regular e-mail account, you will get very frustrated. The one I use gives a free 60-day trial, and they have loads of great templates that make it so easy to get started.

• Keep It Simple! Multi-column newsletters - with many articles and loads of photos - may look pretty in print, but an e-mail newsletter is easier to read when it is short and simple. Studies show that you get more sales when your newsletters are concise. Stay with one column, and use just one or two photos to get your point across. The most common reason that designers stop doing an email newsletter (or never get started) is they make it too complicated. Don't fall into that trap. The simpler your newsletter - the more effective it will be.

Some of the secrets I've learned seem to go against all of our instincts as designers and business owners, but please believe me - they work! When I began to use all of this advice, my sales went through the roof. I know it can work for you, too.

Can e-mail newsletters work for the wholesale workroom?

Absolutely! If your main target is designers, write tips for them. As a designer myself, I know I would really appreciate weekly or monthly tips from my workroom! Here are a few ideas for your articles:

3 easy places to up-sell trim

The quickest way to calculate yardage for a slipcover

How to choose the right lining

If you start sending tips to your designers and other potential clients, you will quickly become the expert, go-to workroom! And don't forget to subscribe ME to your newsletter.

If you'd like a step-by-step guide to launching a powerful, profit-boosting e-mail campaign, check out www.enewsletterblitz.com

Starting a Retail Fashion Business - Top 3 Ways to Promote Your Business on the Web

In the world of retail fashion, it is important that you get to market yourself to prospect clients properly. This is because when people start seeing how capable you are, they will keep coming back to you. They will even recommend your business to all their friends. When this is achieved, you have found yourself a great word of mouth marketing campaign. This is one of the most proven ways for starting a retail fashion business.

In order to get more clients to work with, it is important that you expand your horizon. You need to go out and market your business to more people. The best way you can do this is by using the internet. Through this, you will be able to get the attention of people because you are letting them find you on a wider scope. If you've never done any online promotion, here are some tips that you can use to achieve this:

Top 3 Ways to Promote Your Business on the Web

Tip #1: Email Marketing

When you have built a client list, you should make it a point to get in touch with them at least once every two weeks. This is a great way you can stay in contact with them because they will appreciate a more personal connection with you. However, you need to be careful with this because you might get labeled as a spammer. As such, you need to be careful about what you should put in the email you send out. Try sticking with giving them information about new arrivals in your store. This way, you don't get them to change their mind about having you as their contact.

Tip #2: Search Engine Optimization

If you are going to market yourself online, you need to make sure that you use the right tools for putting yourself on top of a search results page. The reason for this is that people will want to use the top few results of that page. If you are not there, then they will disregard you and will not take a second glance.

Tip #3: Use Social Networking Sites

Now that almost everyone is on Facebook, you can use this social networking site to market your business. Through this website, you can post new clothes that you have for sale. By doing this, you can get interested people to see your new items and will get in touch with you.

The internet is a very powerful tool that online marketers use. While you are certainly not the first nor last to use it, you need to be able to stand out from your competitors. By following the tips mentioned above, you can easily achieve your online marketing goals.