Kids Fashion Week

Models need to be five-ten to strut the runways in the Big Apple, right?

A model wearing Aria in Kids Fashion Week, photo courtesy of Getty Images

Nope. A parade of pint-sized models worked the catwalks on October 18 and 19 and wowed reporters with their fashion flair at Kids Fashion Week. These future supermodels, many in the two- to three-foot range, showed off spring designs for the tot to teen set from Alivia Simone, Anasai, Aria Children’s Clothing, Charm, Chloe, Clarks, Bonnie Young, Dillonger, Imoga, Oil & Water, Parsons The New School for Design, Ruum, and more.

PetitePARADE, sponsored this season by Aqua Hydrate, Baked by Melissa, Camille Rose Naturals, Earnshaw’s, GoGo SqueeZ, La Petite Magazine, Love My Alannah, Tattly, Zico Beverages, and WGSN, has held their Kids Fashion Week twice a year since 2010. The next petitePARADE will take place in March 2015.

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Fashion Week is here for Spring 2014! Let’s start with this Fashion Week for Dummies Tip: Next season’s fashions are shown about six months ahead of when they will appear in stores, i.e. Spring 2014 collections appear on catwalks now, and Fall 2014 will debut in February.

The models who walk in the most shows during Fashion Week often are the same models who will garner the most tear sheets in fashion spreads this fall. The editors who go to the shows are reviewing the clothes and looking for the season’s hottest models.

The most renowned Fashion Weeks occur in New York, Paris, and Milan, but London has been a contender for decades and every other city from here to Tokyo seems to have launched their own version (Miami, Los Angeles, Scottsdale, Toronto, Montreal, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Florence, Rome, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Moscow, Jakarta, Tokyo, Perth… The list goes on and on).

The Model Strut

The style may be a tad different from season to season, era to era (the sexy strut of larger-than-life supermodels, the trudge of the heroine chic girls…), but some things haven’t changed since China Machado walked for Givenchy and Balenciaga in Paris in the ’50s. Runway models must:

1. Exude confidence

2. Stand tall (and have long slender legs)

3. Put one foot in front of the other (literally)

4. Not hunch their shoulders

5. Make whatever they are modeling look fabulous

Model Money

Linda Evangelista once famously said that she did not get out of bed for less than $10,000. Those were the days. Few models make what the supermodels did doing runway shows. That’s because they were a select posse of girls (about 10 to 15, with Linda, Christy, and Naomi leading the way), whom every designer wanted. The masses knew their names, they had big personalities, their agents kept upping their rates, and designers paid, and paid, and paid, until… until, well, enough was enough. And celebrities started stealing some of the limelight on fashion magazines, weakening models’ clout.

These days models turn over faster, so few have bargaining power to demand huge rates. A small show may pay $200, or, more likely, pay in trade, i.e. clothing (probably an item or two, not a whole wardrobe). A big-name show may pay $1,000. Back when I did Fashion Week (a few years ago…ha), I made about $500 a show, or, in one case, nothing, as the designer just never paid. Who was it? Hint: A photo from that show is in this collage and it is NOT Alberta Ferretti …

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