Working at Dallas Market Week

The glorious view from the atrium..

Actually written Oct 31 2008..

I worked Dallas market week last week, and it was a really good experience. I was originally hired to model in the showroom, but Steve, the showroom owner, found out that I have a degree in Fashion Design, and my job title quickly became more flexible. It was really quite interesting watching the buyers shop lines and listening to all the conversation around me- kind of like being the proverbial fly on the wall. I worked very long hours- not to mention the hour it takes to make my hair behave like it belongs to a model- and at the end of market I never wanted to work again. But now I’d be ready to do it again next week if I could.

Dallas Market Center may be the most wonderful place in the world. If there is a more wonderful place, I’m sure its in New York or Paris or Milan. Or maybe in London, but that’s really not fair- the English accent makes everything more appealing. There are 15 floors, with a huge gaping atrium in the center that cuts down through all of them so that when you ride the clear elevator up you can window shop every floor for just a moment. Just going up to the 14^th floor where I worked made me feel like I was getting ready to do something quite glamorous and exciting.

When the place fills up with buyers, it suddenly becomes very hard not to go around blatantly checking out everyone’s shoes. It may be a stereotype, but it is true- for the most part, buyers are very glamorous. I often wished that I could be the Sartorialist (http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/) and just go around taking pictures of them all. But instead I had to stand and look pretty and be the object of attention. While there are young, trendy buyers to be seen, a lot of them are nearer to my mother’s age, or even her mother’s age for that matter. These were the women I was most fascinated with- you see glamorous twenty-something women in every magazine, (although sometimes all a story contains is young women who are presented as glamorous, although the particular specimens may or may not be.) But at market I saw so many women in their forties and sixties with devastating style and confidence.

The modeling in a showroom can run the gamut between the easiest kind of modeling and the hardest. In and of itself, the job is easy. Just stand and display a garment, turn when told to, put on something else when told to. The hard part is this- Market Center was FREEZING the entire time, and many of the garments I had to display were rather tiny swimsuits from Cia Maritima. Putting on a swimsuit is easy enough, but at the end of a day spent concentrating on smiling and not letting myself shiver I find I’m much more tired than I otherwise would have been. That said, I absolutely loved the bikinis- even the Brazilian cut ones- and the thought of how good they looked on me went a long ways toward keeping me warm. Plus everyone I got to work with was really cool.

Steve also has the distinction of having played guitar with John Denver- and I’m quite fond of John Denver so it was cool to hear some stories about that- and we also got to hear Steve play at Market Center one night! His website is http://www.steveweisberg.net/, you can see info about both the showroom and his music there.

I also got to show a few lines from time to time. I have never really thought of myself as a “seller” personality type but I must admit I did find it quite enjoyable. It’s not about convincing someone that they should buy something. It’s just about connecting a person who already wants a product to the correct product. I will most likely continue doing some work in the showroom for Steve, which I am looking forward to. Although I am focused on and enjoying the heck out of my modeling, it is good to feel like my degree is getting a bit of use.

An outfit I put together with some of the showroom samples