This time we're going to call it, Florida Fashion Weekend. It kind of changes things up. This one was completely just Jessica and I. The other one we had a partner. This one was Jessica and I, we decided okay, we're going to try it. We recruited a team and tried it again. Boom! This one was even more successful than the first one. The good thing was we learned a lot from our first show and from doing the research and visiting all of these other fashion shows that we really had a good idea. From not knowing anything about fashion shows to being very well educated about what people were doing. In addition, we decided to take the approach, even though we weren't educated about what people were doing, we decided to take the approach of "What would be fun for us?" We wanted to create something that was not your normal, stuffy fashion show but, something that your average every day Joe, like myself, /laughs will go to and have a great time. You know what I mean? I'm the type of person that I like meeting people and I like networking. Jessica, you know, is a saint. She's pretty much a saint. She likes to have a good time. We decided we're going to build a show. Let's build it and the fashion that fits us. I'll rewind a little bit to talk about our background. We're military brats.
Anzzia: Really?
Rob: Yeah, my Dad is a retired Marine and I did eight years in the Army. Our parents are originally from Panama. Born and raised in Panama. So, you can imagine them moving from Panama, I was born in New York. From there my Dad joined the military. We were in a small town in North Carolina. Where we spent most of our childhood. Some of it we did spend in Panama, the country. /laughs
Anzzia: /laughs The country, yes.
Rob: From North Carolina, we've moved, we did a lot of our Elementary school years in Hawaii. Then from Hawaii, we went to New Orleans. /laughs The area we lived at in New Orleans wasn't the greatest. So, we were living in one parish and going to school thirty miles away at another parish in the same county. Jefferson Parish, you know what I mean? So, long story short, that's where the International part came from.
We saw a lot, being military brats, living on a base with so many diverse people. We really learned how to pretty much be in a room with anybody, any culture, any situation, any demographic and feel comfortable.
Anzzia: Yeah, it exposes you to much more.
Rob: Right, exactly. That was the thing that drew us to Orlando. We didn't have a home being military brats and our parents being from Panama. Once I got out, I did eight years in the Army, once I got out of the Army and it was about the same time my Dad was retiring and Jessica was finishing college we all just kind of, with like a consensus, we all just migrated to Orlando. We like the tropical weather and we like the diversity.
Anzzia: Okay.
Rob: That's where the name and the idea of the International came from. We said, “Okay, we want to do Orlando Fashion Week but, we want to make sure it's international. To embrace the diversity that exists in Orlando and that visits Orlando.
Anzzia: That's beautiful! That brings me to one of my next questions, in regards to your designers and some of your models, are they in fact from all walks of life and from all over the world and country? Is that something that you two heavily incorporate?
Rob: Yeah, definitely. Especially with the kid shows, we play up a lot with themes. Where it's an international type theme. You know what I mean? But, the good thing about the models, what we do that was different at the time, now we see a number of organizations doing the exact same thing. Even the bigger fashion weeks are starting to do this. But, we let the designers pick the models. So, from a business perspective, that was one of the things that we looked at. Like, okay as a designer, this is your brand. So, you should pick the model because that model is representing your brand and you know what you're looking for. We host a casting call where we invite, where we have up to six hundred people, sometimes more and we do a two day casting and the designers choose their models that fit their designs. That, organically, ends up being a really diverse, international cast, that's in the show. Our designers find us, we have designers, this last