Fashion's Night Out: SRC Rocks Kate Spade Contest!

As previously mentioned, for Fashion's Night Out, Erin and Lani were invited to compete in the Kate Spade window challenge. We arrived around 8PM at the Kate Spade store on Broome St. which was already packed and had a massive line outside as Tim Gunn was signing copies of his new book entitled Gunn's Golden Rules. After organizing the teams together and explaining the rules, the window design competition began around 9pm and lasted for 60 minutes.

Each team was assigned one of Tim Gunn's golden rules (from his book) as a theme and directed to come up with a window display that reflected both Gunn's rules and Kate Spade.

After being paired up with an amazing teammate (Sarah Shine), some heavy scissor work, taping like mad women and dolling up a couple mannequins, the girls from Sugar Rock Catwalk went head to head with four other teams and came out on top winning the competition!!! The window display was judged by Deborah Lloyd (Creative Director of Kate Spade) and Tim Gunn himself! Not only that, the girls each ended up scoring an iPad, Kate Spade bag and an autographed copy of Tim's book! Kudos to Erin, Lani and Sarah for their amazing victory!!!

Since everyone wasn't able to attend the event, I thought it'd be fun to sum up the night's event with a quick picture documentary, so enjoy.

Before the Gunn:

Erin and Lani were assigned Gunn's golden rule of "Take the High Road" which served as their team's theme for the night.

After figuring out their team name, they were introduced to Sarah - the third member of their group.

Go Go Go:

A timer was set up in the store with a 60 minute countdown. At the start of the clock Tim let out his catchphrase "Make it Work". It was just like being on an episode of Project Runway!

The girls' plan of attack had two phases - the first involved dressing the mannequins while the second entailed the decoration the window.

Phase 1: The Mannequins
As soon as the clock began its countdown, all the girls went for the clothes (how typical). There were some skirts, tops, dresses, a jacket, a cardigan and some tights for the team to choose from.

Erin tackled the first mannequin and outfitted it with a blue skirt, printed blouse, and cardigan.

Lani and Sarah double teamed the second mannequin and went to work outfitting it with a patterned dress and teal stalkings. Even though the dress was easy enough to slip over the body of the mannequin, the stalkings proved to be a bit more challenging and ended up becoming a group effort!

Overall the girls had great teamwork on the mannequins! The finishing details for each outfit including the top hat, accessories and placement of the cardigan were all a collaborative effort - good stuff!

Phase 2: Everything Else
The majority of the hour was spent on designing, constructing and executing the decoration of the window display. After dressing the mannequins, the girls were left with about 45 minutes to complete the window display.

The first thing the girls did at this point was stop and think of an overall design plan they could execute. Since the theme was "take the high road", ideas were thrown out which eventually led to the infamous "yellow brick road" from the Wizard of Oz. Once the idea was formed, Erin put her Crayola marker to paper and roughly sketched out the road and some sort of skyline.

Sarah began drawing out the outline for the winding yellow brick road and was joined by Lani to finish off the tail end of the road.

While the other girls were working on the road, Erin went after the skyline piece and ended up creating a NYC skyline out of gold which served as the destination point.

Next came the more difficult task of attaching the road and skyline to the piece of card stock which hung from the ceiling that served as a backdrop for the window. Definitely easier said than done.

In the meantime, Sarah began writing out letters in gold which spelt out their team name/theme of the night -"Take the High Road".

Once the letters were drawn, the girls began cutting them out while still trying to secure the road and skyline up against the window display.

With less than 12.5 minutes to go, the mannequins made their way up to the windowsill for placement.

A whirlwind of tape ensued (used to attach the cut out letters to the window board) along with lots of additional gold star cutouts.

With less than 20 seconds on the clock, some last minute touches of gold foil confetti were added to the base of the window.

All done!

The Verdict:

Next up, Deborah and Tim began the judging process and checked out each of the five windows that were created to come up with one winner...I had a good feeling about them taking home the prize after Tim mouthed "nice work" through the window as he passed by!

Drumroll.....Tim announcing team Take the High Road as the winner!!

Congrats!!!!

The winners posing outside in front of their creation!

Photos (two above) courtesy of Cory Schwartz/Getty Images for Kate Spade New York

Here's some shots of the other windows that were created:

This was my first experience at FNO and all in all, I had a blast! Special thanks to Kate Spade for hosting such an amazing event!!

Sugar Rock Catwalk