The Day Before the Show

September 7th, 2009

If you care about fashion, even a smidge, you’ll want to sit up tall this week and pay attention. This Thursday kicks off Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York, the first of the major fashion weeks worldwide to present Spring/Summer 2010 collections. The Block team will be there, of course, wide-eyed and ready to TWEET from the sidelines, and to post a few photos and videos too. But as we get ready for such a trip, tying up loose ends here at the office and packing our bags before racing to the airport, we can only imagine the flurry of frantic designers and their teams swirling around countless fashion studios and sewing rooms all over Manhattan this very second. They’re all just days away from their runway shows, and you can bet they have more to do before show time than they have time to do it.

But after September 9, you needn’t imagine what these pre-show storms are like; you can see for yourself. This is the premise of the new Sundance Channel documentary series, The Day Before – the hectic and incredibly tense 36 hours before a major fashion show. Paris-based writer/director Loic Prigent (who also made Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton) was granted unprecedented access to Sonia Rykiel in Paris, Proenza Schouler in New York, Fendi by Karl Lagerfeld in Milan, and Jean Paul Gaultier Haute Couture in Paris. In the series premiere, Prigent takes us behind-the-scenes of Sonia Rykiel’s 40th Anniversary show, a production so grand it cost more than $1 million Euros to produce: 75 models, 540 VIP dinner guests, a structure built only for the event, and a surprise tribute show presented to Sonia by peers like Lanvin, Lagerfeld, and Martin Margiela. To be on the sidelines of this is way more exciting than any sporting event we can imagine.
http://www.sundancechannel.com/series/the_day_before