Stefania Morland

Marco Filby is now working on our music for the show. Deon is running around organizing everything. We are also still waiting for the models to confirm. Shana is back at school and also helping in the studio when ever she has spare time. I am trying to make sure that all our key clientele get an invite to our show.

The trains and busses being on strike also does not help our ladys coming to work and getting back home.

Any how it will all come together beautifuly in the end.

It always does.

After practically harassing the kind people at Virgin I could not get a hold of the right people.

Both Kyle and I worked very hard over the weekend to get my presentation ready for today.

I had also managed to contact the kind man at Nikon via e-mail and hope to hear from him soon.

I haven’t even had my coffee for the day but I could not tear myself away form my laptop and phone.

The day ended with Stefania, Shanna, Leon, Kyle and I having a drink at the Mount Nelson. I felt defeated but resolved to start fresh in the morning.

Woke up early. Pinned my hair up just like a business lady, except not as neat because I am in fashion business not just any business.

I put on this beautiful grey satin dress with lots of chains around my neck and now I just have to decide on shoes. Boots or heels. Heels it is because it is business and I always feel a bit more confident with a few extra inches to back me up. Little did I know that my feet would not be liking me very much towards the end of the day.

I’m going to fast forward to lunch. Up to this point none of the speakers had Q and A after their talks. I had hoped that the speakers would at least walk through the audience to get to the stage but there was none of that either. Therefore, I couldn’t even pretend to trip Richard in order to get his attention. (ha, ha just a little joke for those of you that do not know me. I would never do such a thing, on purpose).

I told one guy sitting next to me about my mission and he was so supportive he was constantly asking me how my hunt for Richard Branson was going.

During lunch I was supposed to collect the DVD’s with the edited video that I could give to Richard. Long story short, the DVD was not done in time so I had nothing to give Richard Branson except a beautifully hand made pouch and images with an empty disk inside.

The speakers continued and they were all really interesting and informative it was as though every speaker was encouraging me to go up there and take a chance and just speak to Richard Branson.(I promise I am not a stalker).

Finally Q&A time. Yes, now I could talk to Richard. Lots of people put their hands up for questions. Richard says he cant hear and could the people who are asking questions please come to the front so that he could hear them better.

I go to the front I held one of the two mikes in my hand and I am thinking about what I could possibly say to Sir Richard Branson for him to give me 10 minutes of his time.

I was to speak after they guy on the other side of the room. What did he say? He had a proposal for Richard to look at, everyone clapped hands and he gave Richard his proposal.

Ok, now it’s me…… my heart it beating so fast how could that guy do exactly what I wanted to do? Dammit! I don’t remember everything I said but it went something like this:

Nicola: Hi Richard, I am sort of doing the same thing as the guy before me, except I would like to have 10 minutes of your time.

MC: Wow, wait a minute why do you want to see him for 10 minutes?

Nicola: No, no it’s nothing like that I actually wanted to talk to you, Richard, about CT Fashion week. Virgin sponsored the event last year and I have a similar proposal except it is different and much more exciting.

Richard: Can you tell me about it now?

Nicola: I knew you were going to say that…. (I should have prepared for that) but as you can hear I am very nervous ……and I would rather have 10 minutes of your time afterwards…. I came all the way from Cape Town to speak to you….

Richard: (he gave me a paused look as if he was thinking about it) yes ok I’ll give you 10 minutes.

Nicola: Thank you, thank you, thank you.

So I went to sit down shaking and holding back the tears

I got a tap on my shoulder from Linda Rossouw from Virgin Money. She was so nice to me. She said that she works for Virgin and that she has not even met the elusive Richard and that if I did not get to see him that I should call her. It brought tears to my eyes.

To tell you the truth the whole experience was amazing everyone was so nice and supportive.

So what happened next….. I sat patiently in my seat as the conference hall started emptying out. I was waiting for Richard to perhaps send someone to collect me for my 10 minutes.

The Summit cleared out quickly and no one came to get me. So I went to the front to see if I could chat to Lorato (the mc of the evening. She is supper talented and I think we should watch her she is still going to do amazing things) Lorato was inundated with people wanting to speak to Richard and give them their business ideas. When Lorato left everyone started circling me. I was getting quite nervous as there were some strange characters. They all seemed to be talking at the same time. Every one of them wanted a piece of Richard. I suddenly felt sorry for him as it must be quite awful not being able to go somewhere without someone wanting some of your money.

So I backed away a bit and waited for the crowds to go away. Maybe he was just waiting for all the weirdoes to leave before coming out. It never crossed my mind that he might think that I was also one of those weirdoes.

Any way Riaan van Rensburg from Virgin Mobile also came up to me and gave me his card. There was also a very nice man from Nikon who gave me his card and said. “if you don’t come right with Virgin call me.

Wow I was blown over, everyone was very supportive and nice to me.

That was the revised version of what happened on Wednesday 22/07/09 a crazy and amazing day.

O, and Richard if you read this some day, you still owe me 10 minutes. You better come and chat to me soon while I still have interesting things to say.

I am going to just give you snippets of what happened as I don’t think I’ve got the time to write much more.

So I got to work:
- Called more people to come to our lunch.
– Stefania went to Birds Cafe to make sure they are fine with us filming there.
– I speak to Inge from Lark and she joins us for lunch.
– O, and before all this happened we filmed a model trying on the latest designs.
– We invite Michelle and her daughter to lunch at birds as well.
– The sweetest intern ever Steffie helps us out at the shop. (Thank you Steffie:)
– After all the filming we went to look at a possible venue.

A lot more happened but just to make you understand that it was a crazy day and that it all seems like a blur now. I’m a bit nervous about Wednesday because everything is happening so last minute. A lot is riding on this video we filmed today I hope Sean can edit it in time for me to give it to Richard Branson.

First I call Ace from Vice magazine he has lots of contacts. He puts me onto someone who might help us with our plan.

I call, arrange a meeting for later that day and we get the ball rolling. We are going to make a short little documentary or film just showing any potential sponsor that we are a dedicated team that works hard and who love what they do, not to mention our great clientele and amazing product.

Ok, so that was finalized we will start shooting on Monday.

What else? We still have to find a venue and also someone to sponsor shoes for the show…. jikes the days are going by so fast and time is running out….

I am waiting for my guardian angels to send me the sponsor of our dreams someone who loves what we do and has the same outlook on life and would also benefit from working with us.

So our options are to have an off site show. This however will cost us a pretty penny because now we would have to pay for everything. Ok cool? How do we get our hands on money like that on such short notice. The show is in a month’s time. We have to find a sponsor and quick.

Deon suggests a blog (whalla) and also a ******* which will blow any potential sponsors mind. We also had several other great ideas….

Ok now I have to find sponsors who? who? who? My mind is working overtime. I am on some strange buzz where I speak so fast and am supper excited that I must have looked like a dear staring straight into UFO strobe lights…. exciting scary and fun all at the same time.

I get a call form AFI stating that we would have to share a fashion show. Wow did we freak out. They just could not understand why we did not want to share.

Please don’t get me wrong its not like we don’t like sharing it just does not make sense for the Stefania Morland brand to be sharing a fashion show. This means we have only half the garments to showcase and also we have to share models and both designers would have to decide beforehand what make-up and hair to use on the models. Our clientele deserve the best and we were not going to compromise.

Too many hassles and it is not inline with the brand. So I called AFI and said if we don’t have a solo show then we are not doing it.

We get a phone call shortly after our decision and arranged a meeting with Deon Redman our producer on Thursday……..