How to Go to Fashion Week
New York Fashion Week – the height of American fashion. Inaccessible unless you’re a celebrity, an heiress, or in the fashion world… or so we thought! Turns out, it’s SO EASY to go to fashion week as a blogger no matter if you have 3K or 300K followers, you just need to know HOW. I’ve successfully done it three times now, so let’s get YOU into fashion week, shall we?
STEP ONE: Prep Work
Before you can even think of asking for invites to shows, you have to get your ducks in a row. Make a media kit, or if you already have one, update it. Sometimes PR companies ask to see it as a reply to your pitch email. Some of you may be thinking, WTF is a media kit? Think of it as a resume for your blog. It shares information about your blog content and style, as well as your social media following. There are many templates available to purchase online that you can customize. You can also get one made for you by signing up for Fohr!
Important info to include on your media kit:
- Who you are
- What your blog is about
- Your social media account names and followings
- Your blog unique monthly visitors and monthly pageviews
STEP TWO: Perfect Your Pitch
Your “pitch” email is where you basically sell yourself to the fashion label / PR company representing them, showing why you should be allowed into their fashion show! I think it’s best to make a “draft pitch” email that you can then copy and paste as you begin to shoot them out.
Some great resources that have helped me improve my pitch email are Style Collective and Julie Solomon‘s e-books.
My number one tip for your pitch email is to KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID. These PR people are going to be flooded with emails asking to get into shows – they are just going to skim. I would say 4-5 sentences TOTAL for your email. The other key is to find something unique about yourself to share!
STEP THREE: Find Contacts
Your perfect email does no good if you don’t have anyone to send it to! Some contacts for shows are easy to find – they’re listed right on the NYFW website. Some you can maybe trade for with bloggers who want a contact you have! I got a lot of my contacts from the resources I listed above. I also internet stalked 😉
STEP FOUR: Send Pitch Emails
About three weeks before fashion week, plug in names and dates to your pitch draft and hit SEND! Then you wait… Sometimes you will get an instant response. Sometimes you never get one. I think you are allowed one follow up email max, you don’t want to annoy or make anyone mad. I would assume that if you don’t get a reply (or a yes) the week before the show that you are not going to go. I suggest making a list of who you emailed and when.
STEP FIVE: Organize Show Schedule
Once you start getting yes back from contacts, figure out their times and locations. Look on Google Maps to see logistically where they are from one another, and which make sense to go to and which do not. I would suggest leaving 2 hours in between shows! Traffic can get crazy and shows tend to never start on time.
STEP SIX: Make Travel Plans
This is the fun part! Style Collective has a discounted block of hotel rooms (I stayed with them my first fashion week). There are a number of hotels centrally located, as well as Airbnbs.
If you are booking a flight, I would wait until 6 weeks in advance as that is when they’re cheapest.
Get ready for fashion week! I will be sharing some of my “hacks” as a fashion week veteran coming soon xx
