Everyday Canvas

Fashion Shows

Prompt: Fashion Shows.
Have you ever been to one or participated in one? How do you feel about fashion shows? Write about this in your Blog entry today.

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I'm not a big fan of fashion or fashion shows, probably because of the presentation techniques and the image of fakeness that has surrounded them. Yet, I can appreciate their economic impact such as setting trends and promoting brand identity. Also, as for being dynamic events, they become expressions of creativity, style, trends, and innovations.

Having said all that, it is hard to believe that I was in a fashion show...as a model...as a four-year old. This still makes me laugh.

It was during the late 1940s. One of my aunts was working as a fashion designer for children. At the time, she had just started. When a fashion show was to be put on for adults in the industry, the company head told her to come up with something, any one good thing, as she wanted to include her in the show, also.

So, for the lack of child models and because I came without a model's fee, I became her model. All I had to do was hold the hand of another model and walk listening to her directions in whispers. Listening to her? Well, only halfway. Since I had seen how the other models acted before the two of us, I acted on the walkway just like them. Monkey see, monkey do. I think my model and I got the biggest applause laced with giggles.

After it was over, I asked why our walk took such a short time, and made everyone at the backstage laugh. I loved the backstage then because people were paying attention to me and later, after the show, feeding me with goodies.

What I didn't like came earlier, during the preparations. Probably a few weeks before the show when my aunt was sewing that ridiculous dress and practicing the big bows on my hair, a la Shirley Temple which was the trend of the day. But I survived it all, and so did my aunt...survived me that is.

No wonder I'm not fashion crazy. I got my first taste of it, good as it was, at a very early age. As for my aunt, she left the company, got married, and was a housewife for some time, and then, she got a job working in a bank. C'est la vie.


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