I Accidentally Walked in Medellín Fashion Week
A consistent theme of my trip is that I never know what is happening.
As discussed previously, I spent the past month working as a receptionist at a hostel in Medellín. When I was working reception occasionally people would stop at the desk and ask for help or favors. On one such occasion a guest named Cecilia came over and made a request in very rapid Spanish. She asked me for a favor which I, maybe over confident in my Spanish abilities, said yes to. The favor I thought I had agreed to? Putting on a pair of jeans she designed so she could take pictures of them for her instagram. The favor I’d actually agreed to? Walking the runway.
And don’t worry, there’s video.
So I have to admit, the title of this piece makes the whole thing sound more legit than it was. Was Cecilia a designer in town for Medellín Fashion Week? Yes. Did I walk a runway wearing her designs in front of an audience? Also yes. Am I confident that if a dog had been working reception that day Cecilia would have strapped the jeans to the dog and had it walk the runway? Absolutely, 100%, without a doubt, yes.
Here’s what happened.
Medellín Fashion Week was a few weeks ago. A designer named Cecilia was staying at the hostel. Cecilia had come from Cali (city in Colombia, not U.S. state) to Medellín for the week to show off her designs and go to events. Cecilia makes jeans. Specifically she up-cycles old thrifted jeans into new designs in an effort to cut down on clothing waste.
And when Cecilia got to the hostel she saw an opportunity.
She wanted to use the hostel common area to put on a fashion show. Free space, free audience, and in my case a free model. It’s not a bad deal on her part. And the owners of the hostel happily agreed to let her use the space. From their perspective someone else was planning an event for them and any event was an excuse to sell more beer.
So Cecilia rounded up some of her friends in Medellín to model but she was a few people short. Which is why, a few days before the show, she came over to me at reception and asked me to model for her. I smiled and nodded like I always do when I don’t understand someone in Spanish and I accidentally landed myself a modeling gig. Kate Moss was discovered at JFK airport and I was discovered at the Rock Hostel reception desk. Seems fitting.
I actually half expected her to forget about the request because she didn’t bring it up again until the day of the show. But, that morning, Cecilia asked me to meet her at 6p.m. in the hostel lobby. I, again still thinking all I had to do was put some jeans on for a picture, said sure. When we convened she began to show me a planned runway route and I slowly realized that I had made a terrible mistake. I confirmed with one of the hostel owners that yes, we were in fact doing a fashion show. Or rather, I was doing a fashion show.
Well, shit.
So Cecilia handed me a pair of jeans to wear and I got ready for the show.
There’s a lot to unpack in this outfit starting with the jeans. Those are the jeans Cecilia recycled. I’ll let you decide how you think they look. Normally jeans are something you want to fit perfectly but Cecilia had decided that I was going to wear these jeans whether or not they fit.
She also styled the rest of my outfit. She asked to see what shirts I had and I showed her a few options. She did not seem particularly pleased with any of them but we eventually settled on the black one. She also wanted all of the models to have jean jackets over their shoulders and was disappointed when I told her I didn’t have one. In my defense I’ve been living out of a carry on suitcase for six months and this fashion show was not on my packing list. We settled on my black jacket which is, coincidentally, my only jacket.
Finally she approved my vans as footwear since those are the only shoes I had that aren’t flip flops.
Then it was time for her to style my hair. Have you ever been curious as to what it would look like if you matched your hair to the bottom of your jeans? Well now you can see. Cecilia gave me a half up, half down ponytail and tied in some of the leftover fabric from the bottom of the jeans. Val commented that it reminds her of the blue people in Avatar and I think that is a spot on assessment.
I actually did keep one of the blue strands after the show and tied it to my backpack for sentimental reasons.
Once the outfit and hair were complete, I was ready to make my runway debut.
I had to include a group photo here for a few reasons. First, so you can see all the different jeans. They are all recycled which is nice. Second, because there are some vital questions that need to be asked. Why didn’t anyone else get fringe hair? Why are all the jeans low rise? Why is Cecilia not wearing jeans??
And the final, most important reason, is because I need to point out the girl in the yellow. She is dramatically serving a model face and I’m living for it. All of her photos were posed like that.
The girl in yellow was a last minute addition to the show. Originally there were only four models. Then, literally five minutes before the show started, Cecilia remembered she had one more pair of jeans to debut. (How does one forget how many pairs of jeans they designed? Idk) She frantically looked around, saw that girl who happened to be a guest in the hostel, and demanded she put the jeans on. And despite joining at the eleventh hour, the girl in yellow did not come to play!! I fucking love it.
Besides the last minute scramble to dress girl in yellow and a brief hiccup with the music, the show went well. I walked the route I had practiced with Cecilia and the whole thing was over in about three minutes. Cecilia ended the show with a speech about the inspiration behind her designs.
In the days after the show, Cecilia kept coming up to me at reception trying to sell me the jeans I’d wore. She wanted $15. I had to keep coming up with polite excuses as to why I didn’t want them. My go to was a poor Spanish translation of “I don’t have any room in my suitcase”. I wonder if she thought I would just smile and agree considering that was my response to her previous request. But I wasn’t about to make that mistake twice.
The cleaning ladies starting referring to me as “la modela del hostel” (the hostel’s model) but the tone in which they said it indicated it was more of a joke than a compliment. I think they mainly liked calling me that because it was easier for them to pronounce than the name Tristan. (Up until that point they had routinely called me “Trystal” like “Krystal” but with a T)
I have a lot of confusing conversations in Spanish, but to be fair to my Spanish speaking abilities, sometimes conversations in English are also difficult.
As I mentioned above, occasionally people ask me for help at reception. Mostly info about tours or how to take the train, all usual things one would inquire about at a reception desk. Sometimes you get a request like Cecilia’s which is weird but fun. And other times you get requests that are just straight up weird.
Here is the dialogue from one such request.
Guy: Hey can I ask you something?
Tristan: Yeah what’s up?
Guy: Can I borrow 50,000 pesos?
Tristan: ….Uuum what for?
Guy: I’m going on a date later tonight and I’m coming up a little short.
Tristan: …. no. ….
I think my brain actually short circuited in the moment he told me it was for a date. I briefly couldn’t produce words. It was just such a brazen request. This is a guy I didn’t really know. If he had said “oh I have a cab waiting outside and I need some cash cause I haven’t gone to the ATM” or something like that I might have loaned him the money. And in fact, people running into the hostel to grab cash for a cab is not an uncommon sight. But for a date? Just cancel the date! It’s an optional activity! I thought the whole thing was so fucking funny. At best he was asking me to subsidize his relationship and at worst he was asking me to help him hire a prostitute.
It has been interesting for me to shift from someone who considers themselves generally competent to someone who never knows what is happening. I’ve had to accept that here, in Colombia (and also Mexico), I am a stupid person.
This was not an easy thing for me to accept, but it is a consequence of traveling to a new country. So many things are confusing for me and I am constantly trying to figure out what is a cultural difference, what is language barrier and what is poor communication.
Leah and I had one lunch in Mexico City in which the woman who gave us our food warned us that there was something in it before immediately walking away. I then went and got her and we spent twenty minutes trying to figure what was so scary in the food we’d ordered that she had to warn us about it. Finally, after a ton of back and forth, I had her type it in my phone and it turned out the thing in our food was a toothpick or palillo. The whole conversation would have taken ten seconds if we were native speakers but instead we had to essentially revert to charades like crazy people. The best part is we never found the toothpick.
Of all the situations you could find yourself in because you didn’t understand what the other person was requesting, a fashion show is a pretty good one. I want to give mad props to Cecilia for putting everything together. It’s such a feat to put on any sort of event, especially with limited resources.
And finally, as promised, here is the video of the fashion show. After all that fuss, the videographer was able to get some good shots of our torsos and faces.
The girl in yellow!!! I’m remain obsessed.