Volunteer to Vogue: backstage at NYFW
Feature photo: Prabal Gurung Spring 2024 Run of Show board. Taken by Faith McNabnay. This article was modified from its original publication on The Daily Texan website from October 19, 2023.
When Samara Bartoluchi was thirteen years old, her parents would travel with her to sneaker conventions in Mexico where she ran her own sneaker media brand. Now a sophomore in Textiles & Apparel at UT, she travels to New York Fashion Week to work with street-wear companies from her country — a full circle for sneakerhead stardom.
“My parents were like, ‘we’re not sending you all the way to the States to study sneakers,’ but I was sure this is what I wanted to do,” Bartoluchi said. “It showed me that there is a place for that vision I have for sneakers and street-wear.”
During fashion week, the backstage crew is like a hive mind. From makeup stands to model dressers and seating charts to Run of Show boards, all hands are on deck.
Photo by Faith McNabnay backstage at Global Fashion Collective event NYC.
The University Fashion Group at UT Austin travels to NYFW twice a year in the Fall and Spring semesters where they volunteer as dressers, technical support, and backstage staff. This year, the group traveled to work with the Global Fashion Collective during the second week of September, and I wanted to know what it was like.
“Fashion week is all about creating something new,” Mcnabnay, the group’s president, said. “Everybody is there: the makeup artists, the production team, the designer themself, and the models are right in front of your face.”
The students fund the trip on their own and networking is a larger process in which the group builds relationships with brands, said Bartoluchi, the group’s Vice President for PR. I wondered what made the four-hour flight worth it.
“People are appreciative of your work,” Bartoluchi said. “Last time, I got to sit in the front row and have (the designer’s) Instagram open to livestream the show, but I was also dressing backstage. There is a different variety of roles you get to do, and it's a fast-paced thing of whatever comes up at the moment.”
When working for bigger brands, students have had to do more on-demand tasks like putting straws in unscrewed water bottles and getting products for the show’s CEO at a nearby store, Mcnabnay and Bartoluchi said.
“At the end of the day, this is a job,” said Mcnabnay. “You get to understand how realistic it is and being able to see the garments in person makes you appreciate it more.”
Another member, a senior Textiles and Apparel student Seth Brogdon, subbed a vacant model spot to walk the runway at a Nolo show last Spring.
Photo by Faith McNabnay of Seth Brogdon preparing for the runway.
“They put us through hair and makeup which was a really crazy experience,” he said. “After that, I just walked. There are a million cameras on you all at once and everyone is looking at you as you go to the front.”
With the shuttering, clicking, and flashing of the lenses, Brogdon said his experience was a mixture of fear and excitement. His runway photos appeared in Vogue Mexico and China after the event.
“I had never been seen by that many people in that way before, but I thought, ‘I am wearing clothes that somebody spent months making. It is not about me, but about the designers,’” Brogdon said.
It was Brogdon’s second time volunteering at a show and he is currently working on his collection that will debut at the UFG Capstone Collection this spring.
“New York is a city that makes things happen,” Brogdon said.
