Leaving my mark at McCombs - International Fashion Show

Every year, my school organizes an International Night Celebration - sole purpose is to share the myriad of cultures of different students in the MBA program with friends. Last year, the black graduate business association was a part of the event. We set up a booth, decorated it with anything that represented the African, African American, and Caribbean cultures. We also got all dressed up in various traditional attires and served food to all the people who stopped by to sample our food. A lot of random people stopped me to ask me where my attire was from and just took pictures with me.

This year, during the planning session, I suggested we have a fashion show. Some people liked the idea but I dont think they knew quite what I meant. I was so sure that I was going to only have my friends participate in the fashion show. At the same time I noticed that I was not quite successful at getting enough members from BGBA to support us having a booth this year so we dropped the booth idea. In any case, a week before the event, I began to get nervous. I guess I'm not quite one to want to be in the lime light. I mean I can be funny and crazy and happy and silly but when it comes to being in a lead position in a social atmosphere, I really dont care for it. I'll step up to get things done if/when I need to and it seems no one else would but at the same time I am happy to take a back seat.

The fashion show turned out to be AMAZING - I dont think I've ever been as excited about organizing something as I was with this fashion show. I had about 55 models representing 12 regions or countries. The fashion show gave each group about 3 minutes each to show off their attires and entertain the crowd.

The Layout
United Kingdon - It started off with "models" representing Britain - With Right Said Fred's I'm too sexy song as their theme. My friend D wore a black suit, white shirt, bowl hat and held an umbrella. He modeled with G another Brit and part of their skit was to pretend it was raining - after all it always rains in England
Africa - The next groups were just listed alphabetically with Africa next - and ofcourse I dragged my roommate to be a model, we got an Ivory Coastan and Moyo, another fellow Nigerian, we had a mini fashion show walk and a dance session.
Carribean - Had a salsa/merengue dance session
Chile - Had a family of four show off their traditional outfit and a dance session with the couple
China - I signed up 3 models and got a total of 8. A nice solemn song and a lot of chinese lanterns and scrolls were displayed
India - I had 10 models :)... They danced and strutted to Panjabi MC's beware of the boys
Japan, Korea,Mexico, Peru, South East Asia, Syria, Taiwan and finally
Texas - announcement for Texas was "The country of Texas". We got a lot of laughs with that and the song ofcourse was "Deep in the Heart of Texas" - People loved it. My friend Cam was amazing, he was initially shy and so I had to bully him to be a part of the fashion show. He was dressed in his Texas gear, cowboy boots and jeans and a hat and towards the end, he opened is shirt to display a "Texas" T shirt.

We ended the fashion show with all the models walking out and waving goodbye.

I noticed that we had the attention of practically everyone at the event. I had talked people into coming out to support and watch. I also think because, unlike all the other presentations that day, this was the only one that had students involved and since students made up the majority at the event, they wanted to see their peers perform as well. Also, everyone got to see different outfits and announcements of what region/country they represent.

Looking back to the planning of the event. I made an announcement about the idea about 1 month in advance and no one signed up. 1.5 weeks before the show, I started sending emails to all the booth representatives and asking for about 2 - 3 people to represent their booths, I had to bully friends to support my idea and then by 3 days before I decided it was a better idea to have everyone use a song from their region. I told them they didnt have to but if they didnt select something I will select something on their behalf - apparently I dont have a good grasp on what represents a region because as soon as I sent out my sample list - song suggestions filled my mailbox :). I also had 2 quick run throughs to give people an idea of what I was thinking 1.5 hours before the event :).

In the day and a half before the event, my mailbox was constantly full. I was busy adding models to my list, changing songs and just making sure everything fell into place.

I got a lot of support from the MBA program office, the official announcer of the event, my friends and from all the models who signed up to be a part of my crazy idea even though they didnt know me.

Watching people watch the fashion show, the amazing text messages I got right after the fashion show indicating that the fashion show was the highlight of the night made me really really happy... I guess I'm not going to be shy to plan another event.