NYFW is always exciting – fashion and celebrity and beauty and power converge making for a whirlwind of activity and opportunity. This fall, we had more than 70 invites, including access to Michael Kors, Coach, backstage with Bobbi Brown (herself) and more.
Every single one of those invites was incredibly difficult to come by. We gave dozens of those invites to Blogger Babes and overall the bloggers were great but some unfortunately, just dialed it in.
HERE ARE TIPS ON HOW NOT TO GET TICKETS NEXT YEAR:
- DON’T show up. Tickets are hard to come by and were assigned to you alone. If you cancel at the last minute, or worse – don’t show up at all – you will not be invited back PERIOD. In fact, you will not be invited to ANY of our events in the future, period. Those tickets cannot be reassigned at the last minute, and WE get blacklisted by the organizer/designer. This is unacceptable.
- DON’T show up prepared. And SLR is great, but we know some smartphones nowadays have great camera capabilities for awesome videos and photos. And do take down the show’s notes and highlights. Taking horrible photos and videos, or just a few photos is a way to not get re-invited. We’re talking fashion so details are imperative. We need a lot of great photos and videos so that we have a lot to pick from. The average show can have 40-100 images and/or video clips. Look at Blogger Babes’ photos on Instagram, look at other amazing blogs – photos need to look that professional.
- DON’T meet deadlines. It’s in the title – fashion week is a WEEK and it’s time sensitive and those images need to go out the minute they’re on the runway. We are involved in multiple shows, reporting to multiple outlets, writing accompanying copy, and many people are involved. You are just one part of the process so if your information arrives late, or you don’t deliver, you are holding up everyone’s work. DON’T be the person that makes the rest of the team stay up until 5 am because you can’t upload photos quickly enough within a few hours of the show closing. (Yes, this actually happened.)
- DON’T follow instructions. We have provided you with instructions and questions to answer and sometimes we are very specific because the story we are pitching has a certain angle. It’s vital that you follow our instructions on a show by show basis.
Fashion week is the height of activity in the fashion world and we are covering it for numerous outlets and it’s important that we maintain our professionalism. We would like to be able to give the same (if not better) fashion week opportunities to other Blogger Babes in the future.
If you saw yourself in any of the above DON’Ts, do keep in mind that as a fashion blogger, invites to exclusive shows and events are given because the organizers do expect great coverage. Yes, we want you to enjoy yourself but there are responsibilities that come with the privilege of gaining (hard-to-get) access.
Likewise, to all the bloggers who represented us reliably, with dedication and timeliness, we thank you and look forward to working with you again. We do keep lists of bloggers who are reliable and those who are not, and we will always reserve the best shows and events to those we know we can count on.
And with that, we look forward to NYFW 2017 and forward.