Burberry Prorsum to show in London for SS10

Maybe London Fashion Week might finally be a destination worth including in the international editors’ schedules, after the announcement today that Burberry Prorsum is showing in London for SS10 this September.

When I worked as an English fashion editor, I was fiercely partisan about the London shows, and was always shocked at how few international editors & buyers bothered to come to London, the so-called laboratory of trends.

La Wintour might come say every five years for a quick recce, and maybe US Elle might send Kate Lanphear, or US Vogue’s Hamish Bowles might swing by, but no editor in chief bothers to attend each season.

But then I moved to New York, and became the fashion director on a major US publication. And it all became crystal clear: attending the London collections from America is an exercise is setting fire to dollar bills. With no major advertisers to justify a physical schmoozing presence, the scoop on new designers can just as easily be picked up from style.com.

It's difficult enough justifying the cost of Paris & Milan. The final total for me (& no assistant) to attend five days of shows & meetings in Milan topped $7000 last time around – my car & driver alone came to $3000. Add on the cost of Paris & London & the logistical problems of being absent from office & home for over three weeks in a different time zone and omitting LFW with its lack of major advertising money suddenly becomes a very simple decision.

But if a major, major advertiser like Burberry decides to show its main line at LFW, (as opposed to, say Marc Jacobs bringing the relatively unimportant diffusion Marc by Marc show over here a few seasons back to support the Mount St store opening), then normally one has to presume that the editors will follow.

But, in this cash-strapped time, with head-count reductions across all the major US publications, can they really justify sending more editors to London to basically attend just one show in the hope of continued advertising dollars? Prepare for a nasty battle on the costs vs results equation at the US mags.

Grazia has the scoop here And get the inside track on what it's really like to attend the Milan Collections here

Through the Looking Glass: The Horror of the Milan Shows…. From a publicist's perspective. Post round up

Here are all the links in one place for my Deep Throat publicist blogger's series of posts on what it's really like to work as a fashion publicist at the Milan shows:

Part one: Preparing & getting there.

Part two: Eating (or not), being forced to wear show samples and the show itself

Part three: The aftermath

Through the Looking Glass: The Horror of the Milan Shows…. From a publicist's perspective Part Three

And here it is, the third & final part of my publicist mole's account of her Milan Fashion Week experiences. I know she's thrilled with all your feedback, so do keep commenting.

9. Hoorah, time for bed. You will definitely be in a nice hotel, maybe not all that nice but certainly with a nice little basket of toiletries. If you are super unlucky you will be in a very grand hotel, at which point you will discover that your client/boss thinks it’s ok for you to share a room with up to 2 other PR girls. Yup. You are an international PR professional in a dorm.

10. Your client will have booked you on a flight back that requires you getting up at 4am, latest. You will probably wake one of the other PR girls who will then hate you unreasonably for ever.

11. Your boss will look on your Milan trip as a ‘treat’ and will require you to go straight to the office to do your report, which your client will require by the end of the day.

This is only a broad outline - there are of course variations on this. You might be sharing a room with annoyingly box-fresh PR’s who want to go and party and will then bounce in to your room at about the same time as you are leaving, looking, you might charitably call it ‘tired and emotional’, following the shock discovery that at 3am and following much booze and what-have-you in a seedy Milanese discotheque, their new gay best friend editor is actually only interested in the strapping Milano taxi driver by the bar and not in chatting about shoes.

Or perhaps you will stay another day or so, at which point you might get to do a quicky hustle up Via Montenapoleone where, now the Euro is strong, you will spend an unfeasible amount on a pair of shoes that you will subsequently regret , followed by a lunch of really quite dire, shockingly expensive rocket salad at La Langhe. But these are rare treats.

So perhaps I am being unreasonably churlish, but it is a fact that for the properly jaded fashion PR, the Milan shows are really only fun once in a blue moon.

Through the Looking Glass: The Horror of the Milan Shows…. From a publicist's perspective Part Two

Welcome back to the second installment of my publicist deep throat's account of what it's really like to be a fashion publicist at Milan Fashion Week. Part three tomorrow.

5. Lunch? Hahhahahaha. This will be crappy espresso from a machine and special Italian sandwiches (mystery meat on dry white, no crusts) eaten during the Endless Meeting which will make you wonder why Italy has such a reputation for great food. There may be mysterious dried up pastries too. Do some phone call stalking of editors remembering all the while and through the haze of embarrassment, that if they don’t come to the show, you will probably get sacked. You would not believe what a motivator this is.

6. If you are especially unlucky, your client will insist on you wearing pieces from the current collection. Which will be in sample size. Which you might not be (despite the lack of food and espresso based diet). You will all try these on together – the fun! - in the clients showroom. The Japanese PR will, of course, look incredible. Ho hum. Your blackberry is still flashing with angst ridden fashion assistants double double checking seating allocations.

7. Show time! This is actually the easy bit where you, wearing something ill-fitting and for which you are not in the right shoes, stand next to the catwalk and herd your editors into their seats whist dealing with the two or three melt downs caused by editors not understanding the runic symbols your designer has chosen to indicate which block and row of seats their squiggles, stars and stickers actually refer to. You will continue to do some phone stalking to make sure your senior eds are not skiving off to do anything as lame as eating or worse, go to some other designer’s showroom.

8. You will then be invited to a dinner, this is unless you are unlucky enough to have a proper ‘intimate dinner’ hosted by your designer for key editors. Assuming not (frankly the ‘intimate dinner’ scenario is a whole world of pain that I cannot at this point delve into without regression therapy), you will then be given a scrap of paper by someone you vaguely know from sales or merchandising, with details of a restaurant somewhere miles away, if not in fact actually outside Milan. Dinner will be from 11pm. Remember you have been awake since 3am at this point.

You will politely chat with a member of the sales team who you will be stuck talking to for hours, as you get steadily more tired. Try to drink your way through this without getting embarrassing. Remember to wait for the Italians to fill up your glass though as they are pretty convinced that self-service indicated alcoholism.

Through the Looking Glass: The Horror of the Milan Shows…. From a publicist's perspective

My series of posts about the reality behind Milan Fashion Week has prompted a huge response from my friends in the industry, including an email that had me hooting with laughter - and wincing with recognition. It was so good, so spot-on, that I persuaded her to let me post it here. She agreed - if I promised never to reveal her identity.

So, LLG presents the second in her series of guest blogs, a deep throat riposte to her fashion editor's view of Milan Fashion Week from X, her absolutely favourite London publicist.
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Much as with Senior Editor jobs, the life of an upscale fashion label PR looks just faaaaabuolus from the outside, parties, free stuff, behind-the scenes access, international jet setting, etc. But the Milan shows are more of an endurance trial for the average fashion flack than a hotly anticipated jaunt. There are a number of absolute certainties:

1. Your client will spend the absolute minimum on your presence in Milan, which means 5am flights (yup, that’s 4am check-in), strictly cattle class. Not only will you be in full body shock at the fact you had to get up at 3am and get dressed in the PR uniform of smart black clothes, but when you get to the airport, you will instantly run into around 25 other PRs, editors, models and maybe a sprinkling of your own clients. Etiquette demands hello-nodding and polite chit chat in the coffee line. It is 4.30am.

You will then purchase the following for the 1 hour plane trip: 4-6 heavy glossy magazines, 1L bottle water, industrial quantities gum. On boarding, you will go to sleep immediately and then have to schlep this stuff around for the rest of your trip. If you are spectacularly unlucky you may end up next to an editor of one of the magazines you are reading. You will then spend the following hour making enthusiastic noises about the contents of said magazine at the hypersensitive editor with a degree of diplomacy that would impress Kofi Annan. It is not yet 5am.

2. There will not be a car and driver waiting for you. On landing, you will negotiate a 1,000,000,000 person line for cabs, replete with a surprising number of snappily dressed Italian gents who will shoulder their way into the queue in front of you. Practice saying no politely. Milan is a company town and they probably work for your client, or the show producer or any of the three million other people who can make life hell for the unwary PR.

Surmount almost impossible odds and get a taxi. Your driver will be either super surly, or chatty. Practice saying ‘Guarda la strada!’ (‘keep your eyes on the road!’) to these second sort, who will be turning around in their seats to talk to you. This type will also probably try and ask you to go to a discotheque with them. It is now about 9.30am.

At this point your office will start emailing you to tell you about all the editors who are complaining that they do not have their invitations/do not like their seats. Use the trip into town to get busy with this or feel the near-biblical wrath of both your client and the editor at some not-too distant point. You will also now start cheerily emailing and texting your way through an enormous list of editors – just to check they are coming/have their tickets/know you are on their case. Some people might think this is stalking – really it’s more like preventative insurance against getting sacked the minute you meet your client and they start interrogating you about who is coming in a way that would have made Himmler proud

3. Off to your hotel? Ha haha hahahhahahaha. Don’t be silly, you need to go straight to headquarters for the international meeting of all the PRs from around the world. Arrive at your client, find them closeted with the other countries PRs. It is a fact that however you try to reduce times on your trip, you will always be the last one into this meeting. Put your suitcase in the corner and try to look professional and worth your fee. Remember to say noteworthy things about the important editors you have had texts from in the car from the airport, whilst kissing your clients hello.

4. You will then enter the Endless Meeting, during which you will simultaneously try to look interested at the numerous statistics about page space and comparisons with money spent on PR and money spent on ads that your client will be explaining, and deal with several million more emails and text messages about show tickets and seating plans. Do a bit more email and text stalking. All the other countries PRs will be doing this too, occasionally having to leave the room to deal with a particularly shouty fashion assistant (presumably standing next to their editor, whose seating allocation they will be calling to complain about but who is waaaay too grand to speak to the PR themselves).

PART TWO TOMORROW!

Milan Fashion Week: The Inside track

Think fashion shows are all relentless glamour and fun? Think again my friends. Relentless they certainly are, but fun is in short supply at the top.

Milan Fashion Week kicks off today, and to celebrate I went through my archive to bring you the Milan shows from the perspective of a senior editor at a national glossy magazine.

Part One: The background
Part Two: How it works
Part Three: Getting around
Part Four: What we actually do
Part Five: Where we stay & eat, & who attends
Part Six: The horror of the Milan shows - & why we love them.