I am finally getting the recap together from Fashion Week. As my apartment will not be ready until September 10th, I have been staying with Adam...and he moved this past weekend. Chaos is beyond what my life has been.

I however am finally enjoying a few quiet hours of solitude and catching up as much as I can. So I can now share how the Jewelry Showcase went! Note that I sadly took very few photos that night as it was crazy busy...I'm pretty bummed about that...but what can you do.

I was invited about a month ago to be part of the Jewelry Showcase during Austin Fashion Week, the showcase is a curated event of the best 16 or so designers from around the country.  I was BEYOND nervous leading up to the event and to make my stress levels soar, my moving pod had not arrived and I had no display.  I spent the few days before scrambling around at Ikea, Home Depot and Michaels trying to gather materials to build a new presentation. I had no idea how it would look or if it would even work when set up. Without the pod, I also had nothing to wear. Adam being the awesome boyfriend that he is, declared that he wanted to buy me a new dress for that night so Holly and I set off on a mission that morning which took us to 7 stores before we found a dress that fit right, but we did it!

The event was at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, a historic and gorgeous back drop for the show. We had the second floor, the center of which was the runway and podium and then there were two rooms off of it where the jewelry designers were all set up. When you walked into the room I was in, Manic Trout was the first thing you saw...I thought that was pretty awesome.

As you can see, I was pretty happy with how the display turned out...not bad for starting from scratch...I did miss my glass blocks though.

Those images are Manic Trout in the press...it looked impressive shown all at once and I think a better display than the usual binders that I had been using.  The whole night was a whirlwind of new faces and the fashion elite of Austin.  Business cards were changing hands in a blur and the swarm of press and the fashion elite was intoxicating.  At one point during the evening I was even interviewed for the CW Austin!

Being set up around the room was only the tip of the iceberg though...the highlight of the event (and the part that made me want to throw up when I thought about it) was the presentation part of the evening.  Each designer had 3-5 minutes to give a speech and 4 models to show jewelry on.  I was editing my speech and trying to mentally slow myself down up until the last second I got up on that stage.

It went well...although the lights went off in the middle for no reason and it caused me to stumble over my words for a second, but both the lights and my speaking ability quickly recovered!  I finished up with..."I am excited to share that even though at the moment my life is trapped somewhere in transit inside of a moving container, as of this week, Manic Trout officially calls Austin, Texas home!" which received such a loud applause and shouts from the audience that the co-coordinator asked me when I stepped down and returned back stage what I said to receive the loudest applause of the night.  It felt good.