Backstage @ FUSE

FUSE was an absolutely incredible show - one of the biggest and most gorgeous fashion shows produced in PDX. I'm still blown away by how grand and beautiful everything was! It was hosted in the ballroom of the Portland Art Museum, featuring dozens of top Portland designers and elite designers from Bejing, China.

Behind the scenes, my day started at 4pm, when I landed at Smashcut Studios to start on the makeup for the models. Myself, Nadia Kingston, Carrie Hamm, George M, and Caprice Hammon were the Makeup Artists for the show. Anyone who knows Caprice, knows they are working with the best! Caprice created the two look for us to style the models with, and the Smashcut Hair team was right behind us. When I arrived a bit before 4pm, we were told that the models were running about an hour behind! That's normal how things go :) It wasn't till later that the lost hour really put us into crunch time!

The models arrived by shuttle at 5pm, and we set to work at once. I finished my girls, and playfully reprimanded them not to lose ALL their lipstick as they giggled and went off to Starbucks. The shuttle arrived around 7:30 to take us all over to the Portland Art Museum. Arriving at the red carpet, we made our way thru and into the main ballroom to the runway. I was blown away by the beauty of it!



We moved on to the dressing rooms backstage and it was a flurry of models, designers, hair stylists and makeup artists. We had 8 more ladies to do their makeup on and 5 men! - and the show started at 9pm. I wish I could have gotten some pictures of all the hurry back there. It was an amazing rush of adrenaline - at one point one of my models was perched on a high table as I'm attaching her fake eyelashes, back to back with Caprice applying blush to her model and George asking if anyone has any more of the Look 2 lipstick - and the show manager is running past the door raising his voice over the chaos "FIFTEEN MINUTES till showtime. And we ARE starting on TIME". I wasn't worried, I knew we would have all the models ready in time. It was down to the wire, but at 2 minutes to the show, we were complete, everyone was dressed and we were backstage and poised :)



Watching the models walk in the lovely designs was another thing altogether. The lights, the music - it was one of the best show this town has ever seen! (here are some pics from the show)