Cushnie Et Ochs Report: Fittings, Fittings and More Fittings!

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On Labor Day, we came in early to work to make sure everything was prepared for the fittings on Tuesday. Kevin Krier and his production team of four lovely, lovely boys arrived at 2 p.m. to go through the run of show and allocate each look to a model. Luckily enough we are only going to have one look per model... so no look changes during the show. There is a total of 25 looks!

Kevin and his team are so beyond organized that Miss Meticulous Michelle is in heaven and maybe a little bit jealous. Our tiny little studio was taken over by computers, printers, plastic shoes bags, number tags, name tags, fitting kits and cameras -- we have already outgrown our space and it is only season one.

The models started arriving at around 5 p.m., and we only saw five girls today as Marc Jacobs has pretty much picked all the same girls and his fittings were at the same time as ours and he’s a little more important than us.

But it was so rewarding to see our clothes on the long-legged beauties finally. The clothes really came alive and were exactly what we envisioned, cheekbones and all. So far there is only one alteration, we are elated!

The boys then left at around 7 p.m. and we finished off patterns and prepared for day two of the fittings, tomorrow is going to be madness…

Tuesday morning we arrived at work at 9 a.m. and called all our factories to check on the last few garments that needed to be ready before the girls arrived. We begged one of the factories to sew one more dress for us that we decided to put in the collection over the weekend. He was not happy but agreed to do it -- thank God.

We then picked up a nude jersey dress that we had not even seen a muslin of but luckily it turned out perfectly. Shortly after we ran back to our studio. The model who is wearing that dress arrived early. The production team arrived shortly thereafter, and we all watched as Anastasia sashayed down the hallway and looked stunning in the dress -- no fitting needed. (Our neighbors on the floor -- wholesalers of women’s clothing and also our landlords -- seemed to rather enjoy seeing the models strut past their office.)

One more model came, and then there was a lull... And then panic broke out! T-Mobile cell phone service was down throughout the city, and none of the agencies could get through to their girls or knew where they were!! Kevin also has T-Mobile, which added to the list of problems, as we were having trouble scheduling the hair and make-up tests. It seemed impossible to find a time that both artists could meet!!

Then we lost several girls to bigger jobs... boo. Losing some of the girls was quite distressing as we lost some great ones, but all faith was renewed when we managed to replace them.

So after not seeing many models for most of the day, between the hours of 6 and 8 p.m. we saw 11 girls!! It was madness! We’ve never even had that many people in our little space. There are several alterations that need to be made now. With one dress, almost the entire thing needs to be taken in, but the other alterations are minor. A zipper on a pair of pants got ripped and we had to cut the girl out of the pants!

After the last girl we all collapsed exhausted on the couch and regrouped for Wednesday….

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