...especially during Fashion Week in Cleveland! Dr. Donald Shingler, Founder and Director of Fashion Week Cleveland, asked me to bring a little music to the fashion again this year--to the VIP party to be exact. This year, the event was held at La Place in Beachwood, and the VIP party was located on the upper level, overlooking the seemingly endless red-carpet runway lined with little white chairs for viewing The Cleveland Fashion Show at 10pm. (The picture in the photo gallery only shows about half of its length.) I was fortunate to be able to share the VIP space with some great people from Sushi Rock, a fabulous sushi restaurant in La Place. They served a variety of sushi and chicken hors d'oeuvres and were kind enough to treat me to a little sampling post-performance; the food was really delectable! Gotta go rock some sushi there soon; I'm more of the veggie and/or crab/lobster sushi type (which was fabulous!), but maybe I'll be brave and venture into some hard-core sushi someday soon...
Pre-show was a lot of hard work for everyone, setting up and getting a boutique mall turned magically into a fashion runway, tango dance floor, VIP party room, and, well, you get the picture! It's a wonder we all looked fashionable by the end of it all! The air hung heavy that evening, humid and threatening rain. It only actually rained while we were loading up the equipment, of course, (so thankful it didn't rain while we were loading in!!) but it was quite hot, which translated into the venue being quite hot as well. I'm happy to see from the photos that I didn't look as melted as I felt, but I did notice the chocolates were starting to get a little soft around the edges--yes it was that hot!
With a lot of hard work, the evening went as planned besides the air conditioning lagging behind the muggy evening temperatures, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Thanks to all for the nice comments about the music! It was fun to sing in such a lively, yet spacious venue and watch the creative fashion flow in and out of the space. Among the VIP attendees were Miss Ohio, Lindsay Davis, as well as Christopher Boyle, the Black Tie Gala's featured designer who has designed for celebrities such as Jessica Alba and Ashanti. You can check out his beautiful collections here.
I hope you get a moment to check out the pictures from Fashion Week posted in the gallery, and I look forward to sharing more news with you soon! Enjoy your summer... It's certainly flying by already.