Episode 27: Creating a Compelling Design Story Through Theme Development | Mastering the Production Series, Part 7

0:00 Hey, hey, hey EdVenturous Educators. Welcome back to Marketing EdVenture with Jacqué. We are continuing “Mastering the Production” of a fashion show series. This is Part Seven, in which we're going to talk about creating a compelling story through the theme development. That is a design story or fashion story. So, let's get into this episode, get ready to take some notes, because I'm going to cover up quite a few things in structuring your theme development, your segment development for a fashion show, let's go.

0:48 You're listening to Marketing EdVenture, the hub for business, fashion, marketing and other CTE educators who integrate marketing into the learning experience. I'm your host, Jacqué Walker. Each week, I'll cover marketing, education concepts, strategies, tips, trends, frameworks, and other information to equip you to connect your classroom to digital natives while cultivating an engaged learning environment. So come on into the room, where your favorite beverage snacks, and even your cell phone are all welcome.

1:28 As we get into developing a compelling design story through your segment development, we need to look at three different things. So there are things that we need to consider when we're setting up the segments and they’re also based on where the merchandise comes from. And then there are several things that need to be determined as a part of setting up the segments. We're going to break those down.

2:02 And the first thing I'm going to talk about is things to consider. There are four key things to consider when you are looking at developing your segments. Of course, the number one thing is the theme. We talked about theme development previously in episode number 24, which is part four of this 11 part series. So your theme is very key.

2:37 Once you have determined your theme, the next thing you want to look at in the segment development is the number of designers you're using for your fashion show. And that's very key if you're doing the internal resource of designers from the fashion design class, because then that's going to help you see how many segments you can develop. If you're using designers that are not the internal fashion design class, then you're not likely basing your segment necessarily on these designers. Because if you're not using the fashion design class, you could be using an array of resources like retailers, community designers out in the community. College fashion designers are donations or merchandise gathered from your own resources with the students and yourself. So it's not always going to be the number of designers. The only exception to that is if you are using the fashion design class, then you would look at the number of designers for the segment's.

3:47 You also wouldn't need to consider the number of models that you're having that you're going to have. Those number of models should have already been determined from your model call based upon what the concept of the fashion show is and what you all decided that you were going to do as far as the fashion show is concerned as far as the theme and everything. So based on that you would have determined oh, we need x number of models. So definitely, when you're setting up your theme development, the number of models are key. Because you have to know how many models you're going to have in each segment. And then the rotation of those models, allowing them enough time to change into their next outfit, etc, etc. And then that leads me to the number of outfits.

4:43 So the number of outfits also helps to determine how many segments you're gonna have. If you have 60 outfits, you may do four segments of 15 outfits. If there's not You set designers. Otherwise, you're going to be looking again, as I said at basing your themes or your segment development on the number of designers.

5:11 So again, things to consider when selecting your segments are the number of designers, the number of models, the number of outfits. And of course, I can tell you that nearly all of my fashion shows had four segments. We were able, regardless of the number of designers we had, we were getting the clothes from retail donations, or what have you, we were generally able to develop four segments. We would run two segments, an intermission, and then two more segments. There were only two fashion shows that I can think of off the top of my head, where we had more than four segments, one of them was our "Fantasy Around the World". I'm going to talk about that in my project that I'm going to drop in the fall. I'm going to talk about that in detail, because that was one of the most detailed and involved fashion shows I had. It was one of the best executed fashion shows that I've had. I don't even know how many segments because the segments were based on the actual Disney movie that it was connected to. That is an exciting thing to talk about. So you're gonna have to get connected to me in the fall when I drop this project, this course, about fashion show production. And then the other, I think we had like 14 designers from the fashion design class. And their collections were so different, that we couldn't narrow them down to just four segments. So we ended up having, I think we had about eight or nine segments. I'm gonna have to go back and look at that. So definitely developing your segments takes some planning, and some management and really looking hard at the numbers. The numbers involved, the designers, the models and the outfits. All right, so those are the things that you need to consider when you're looking at developing a segment or these segments.

7:51 Now the next thing that you need to look at when you're developing your segments is whether it is going to be design focused, or whether there are non-design focused. So let's break those two down.

8:08 So if the fashion show, it's going to be focused and centered around specific designers, in our case, the fashion design class that was the spotlight for the fashion show, and this was their senior showcase, as well as my students senior showcase on fashion show production. So if you if it's designer focused, then there are five areas that we're going to look at.

8:42 We're going to look at spotlighting each designer, as their own segment. As I said before, we could do that, normally, and I would say as their own segment, it could be that it's just as their own segment, or it could be designers whose collections match up well, and we could put them as a segment, let's just use the seasons of the year. So let's say that in the design class, there were 10 designers in that class. And there were three who did a line based on spring apparel. So we would put those designers in a segment and then maybe the other designers, there were two who were winter focused with their clothing. Maybe you know the cool colors or what have you, or long sleeves or coats, jackets, whatever it may have been. So we would put those two in a segment and then we may have three designers that were focused on warm summer clothing. We will put them in a summer segment. Then the other two we could have just been fall, like greens and like autumn colors and things of that nature. So we would put them in a segment of this and that would be the fall segment. So you have your winter, spring, summer fall segments for your fashion show. That's the gist of how you could take those designers and spotlight them in segments, along with other designers. Now, there were some designers like I said, there was one year when we had about 14 designers, and we really couldn't narrow them down into segments together. So they had their own segments. This is the way we chose to do it. And so there were, I think there were, like I said, we had eight or nine segments. So there were some segments that had paired up designers. It could have been because of their lack of, their low number of outfits that they created. So we have to put them together to create one full segment. However, we're spotlighting designers.

11:02 So the second thing is, you can have when you're doing a designer collection. The designers could actually select their models, not all of them. But we did give the opportunity for designers to specifically select the model for their spotlight item. Like in the line that the design students created, it was generally about six outfits and we asked that there be one that was a showstopper. So that showstopper outfit would be the one that the designers would tend to want to select a model for, because they sometimes designed that outfit with that model in mind. So if it's designer focus, one you're going to spotlight the designer, two you will allow them to have a little bit of a selection in a couple of models or so for their collection. And we also let them do a primary and a secondary, just in case their number one model could not fit into their segment. All right.

12:15 And then the third thing is we would arrange the designers based on the model selection. So when you're talking about developing your segment, you have to look at the design, the models that the designers have chosen, because sometimes that will dictate how your segments flow, the order of your segments. Because if there's a designer who wants Cecily as a model because she is the epitome of runway model, her body is perfect for a number of outfits that the designers are creating. So you may have Cecily, who will do the showstopper outfit in segment one. And of course, you may have every designer who wants Cecily to do their showstopper outfit, but she cannot because this lady cannot go back and change clothes that many times, nor can she be in, you know, so many segments. And so there may be a limitation. So let's say that there's two designers who were first in choosing Cecily and were the perfect fit and Sicily actually wanted to wear those designer outfits. We could not put those segments next to one another because Cecily would not have enough time to go back and make a change and be ready for the next segment. So we would then say okay, well we have to move designer three into segment three. In order for Cecily to be designer one and Designer two, I'm gonna say designer two, be designer two's model, okay. If that makes sense, I hope that makes sense to you. So, the segment development is also determined by model selection from the designers.

14:19 So the fourth thing is that all of the rest of the models will be assigned their clothing based upon the designer lineup. So we have to look at how we've placed the designers into the flow of the fashion show. We generally, as a rule of thumb for me, was to have one segment in between each fashion model's rotation. Now it could be possible for a model to be in a segment the segment right Add after the segment that they just modeled in, depending on how many items are being shown in that particular segment. And if that segment is right before an intermission, because then we get to have an opportunity to reset and all the models get into their next outfit. So that was one of the main things that we had to consider, when we're setting up the models based upon having the designers set into specific segments based on you know, a spotlighting them, then we would have to make sure that we had enough time for the models to make a change before they went into that next segment. As I stated previously, in Episode 26, we only in my last, I believe, three years of teaching, did we focus or spotlight the designers in the fashion design class. Those shows, and the names that the students came up with were interesting. So we have "Fashion Nostalgia" and "Fashion Meets Music" and "Stars of the Night". I will have examples of those also in my course, about the fashion show production. But those were examples of shows in which we had to spotlight the designers. And then we had to work with managing where the models were going to be in the rotation of the clothing, because the designers got to select a lot of the models that they wanted to wear the clothes. So it created a little bit of a challenge for us. And just trying to make sure that the model that they wanted, was going to be able to wear the merchandise and you know, with the rotation of the models throughout the different segments. And so that just left us to then assign the clothing to other models that were not specifically chosen by designers. We had to, you know, just make careful selection as to where we were going to place the other models for the clothing that was leftover after the designer selections.

17:24 Hey, Edventurous Educator, I just want to take a quick break. I have a program that will be available in the fall 2024. It will provide a scope of resources to help you create and implement a successful fashion show. It's something I've wanted to do for years because the fashion show has so many moving parts. And of course, when you're managing students who were responsible for implementing the show, it really is a project management responsibility. Now this program will contain video and audio modules, as well as a project management framework. Proprietary documents for management in all areas of the responsibilities, signature, model call framework, an outline for creating your fashion show Bible, a media kit framework, real examples of my productions, and highlights of my student-led fashion shows and so much more. Now, stay tuned for the early bird invitation to access the program. I look forward to having you access that. And I also look forward to hearing about your fashion show productions and seeing them on Instagram. So be sure to connect with me at Marketing EdVenture. So I can see all of the wonderful work that you're doing with your program. Now, when we were developing the segments for the show, using apparel that was not specific to a designer that was not from our internal fashion design class. This made things a little bit easier, because then we had full control over the models. What they were going to wear except for if there was a college designer. We did give them an opportunity or even the independent designer, we did give them an opportunity to see our models and select a model that they wanted to showcase a specific outfit of theirs. But so when we were doing the segment development for non-designer focused apparel, we just looked at the main story points of the show. To give you an example, we had a circus theme one time for a fashion show. And so our segments were based upon events that would normally happen at a circus. Can't wait to let y'all know about that and reveal to you that particular thing. But because we had chosen the segments based upon what we would see at a circus, then we were able to freely go out and shop merchandise for those segments. And then, of course, we had in mind who we may want for a particular segment. But mainly, we will shop for the clothing first. And then once we got the clothing, we would fit the models to these clothing. But sometimes, like I said, there were certain models that we wanted in certain segments of those shows that were not designer focused. But we would go out and search for an outfit for that particular model.

21:16 Other things to consider, we usually had about four or five segment concepts based on the story point. As I said before, I generally like to keep my fashion shows at four segments and it is just easier to manage. And we would then again, assign models to those various segments, which was just much easier because we didn't have the restrictions of a designer wanting a particular model. Examples of these shows would be again, like the circus themed fashion show, our decades project, what year do we start with, I think we started with the 60s. And then we went all the way up to futuristic. So that was very fun.

22:05 The last part of developing your segments, and creating this compelling fashion design story is you have a list of things you need to consider. And these things that we're going to talk about are not in any particular order. They are just key things to consider when you're looking at your segments.

22:27 So one is, of course, that the designer and merchandise placement within your show, that's going to help you figure out how to develop the themes for your fashion show. The model assignment of the outfit is very key, we already talked about those two.

22:48 Then things to determine are the props that you're going to use in the fashion show. Now, this doesn't dictate the segment development. But it is very key. When you're selecting your props, you have to look at the flow, especially if they're like big things. One year we had these walls that were like, two by eight. I think there are two by eights, because it was just like, you know, you go to the Home Depot and you buy that sheet of wood plywood. I don't know what exactly it is called hardwood, whatever. But they're generally about four feet wide by eight aren't they? I'm not quite sure. But we had those like cut in half. And we had those on wheels. And so we use those as backdrops for fashion shows a few times, actually. And so you have to consider the props and the transition are those props when you're looking at your segment development? Or is it going to be feasible to transition certain props. So you may think about putting segments together that are going to use the same props so that the movement would not have to be, you know, in and out in and out of those props. You can have those props set for a set period of time, and then move them out when you don't need to use them anymore. So prop development or selection is key in helping you with your segment development.

24:34 Now for your segment development, of course you're going to have to have your music selections set up.

24:40 Other things that you need to consider are your backdrops again. In our auditorium, there were some poles at the top that held like flags and various things that the theater used when they draped the fabric over to change the background. So for the different things, we use those on occasion for our circus theme. We had a big tent that was created and hung from those. And, you know, you have to think about when you would need to lower and lift up that backdrop for the scenes for your segments. So that's another thing to consider when you're looking at arranging your segments for the show.

25:31 And then the other things you need to consider when you're developing your segments is the length of the segment. So if you have like four segments, let's say you want your fashion show to be an hour, ours usually lasts about an hour that's including the intermission. So our intermission generally was about 15 to 20 minutes. So then you have, let's say, 40 minutes left for your segments. So then you have your segments that are going to be about 10 minutes each. And so you have 10, then 10, then a 20 minute intermission, and then 10, then 10. That makes up your whole hour. So based on how long you want your fashion show to be, then you need to determine the length of your segments, and then the intervals in between each segment. So we did have just a little bit of time, maybe three minutes or so between each segment, just for the change and transition of the segment itself. The designers, the models, and all those things you have to take into account when you're looking at your intervals, because you don't want to make it a long interval, but you do need time to transition. And then also your intermission, like I said, before, there'll be like 15 or 20 minutes. Generally we did like entertainment during our intermission: our band, our dance team, we had a jazz ensemble to play one year. We invited a dancer from our performing art school. And so it's just a lot of different things that we've had as intermission, something just to keep the audience entertained while the models reset. Okay.

27:15 And then of course, another thing that helps with your segment development, like I said before, is the order of the models based upon what items they're gonna be wearing from the designers, especially if they were wearing items from a specific designer, or designer requested them.

27:31 So those are things to consider. Again, when you're crafting this fashion show, in your setting, you're trying to tell the story, the fashion show is always telling a story, you're trying to tell the story to the designers or of the clothing, or of the theme that you've selected. So your segments are going to have to go in an order that builds the story. Okay, and, again, you have your things to consider: your theme number designers, number models, number of outfits. The next thing you're going to be considering is whether it's a designer focus or non designer focus, and they both generally have the same thing that need to be considered except for when this designer focus, you're spotlighting a designer, so they're probably going to be in a segment by themselves or paired with like collections. And then you just have to make that determination of how many segments that's going to be. And then your models are going to have to be assigned based on the designers or on the clothing that you've selected for those non designer focused shows. And then the final thing is, you know, determining a lot of things. A lot of things are going to help you determine your segment flow. So I won't go back through all of those different things, but it's a whole list of things and there's probably some other things that I have not listed, but these are all like the major key things, helping you to to determine your segment, flow development, and all of that to tell your compelling fashion design story.

29:12 Thanks for listening to Marketing EdVenture. Remember to subscribe, rate, review and share this episode with someone you think could benefit from the information shared here today. If you have any questions or want to connect with me, find me on Instagram at Marketing EdVenture. All links and resources discussed in this episode can be found in the show notes at marketing edventure.com.