The Day After

Yesterday was the last day of the IMFF and the last day of the first week of work I’ve done this half of 2007. It was a gruelling week. What got to me (and everybody else) the most was the standing around, waiting for people to decide where you go in the order, what clothes you should wear and if a shawl should or shouldn’t be added. The word modelling has lost its original meaning for most people, I think. To model means to stand as an example of how something would look.

We create models of the world to test our hypothesis. These models are then put up to stringent test and inspected from all corners to see if it holds true and gives an accurate representation of what it is trying to model. These models rarely complain because, for one thing, they are not sentient.

Unfortunately, when your model is a human being and you spend as much time looking at it, poking it and considering it, that human model often won’t appreciate it terribly much. People think that modelling is all glamour, parties and pictures. Most of modelling, however, consists of standing around and waiting for something to happen.

You don’t realise how tiring doing nothing can be until you’ve been forced to do it for five days.

Last night there was supposed to be a party to celebrate the ending of the fashion week. There was a frenzied, desperate pushing at the door with people trying to get in, screaming and generally acting like there was actually something worth seeing inside. There wasn’t, really. Just clumps of people standing around and talking, wondering why they had tried so hard to get inside in the first place. I think the negative energy of getting into the hall seriously affected the atmosphere, poisoning everybody’s mood before they had even arrived.

Then, at about 1 o’clock they police arrived and shut the entire party down. I had kind of expected that the party organisers would have been well enough connected to make sure something like that wouldn’t happen, but apparently they quite frequently have run-ins with the police, according to the rumours that have come my way.

As a whole the week was tiring, discouraging but definitely an experience I wouldn’t have like to miss out on