See you at First Fashion Friday!

I’m kind of bummed. I had to burst my daughter Nicki’s bubble yesterday. She was prancing around the living room, doing her best supermodel walk, going, “Mommy, I can’t wait! Can I be in the fashion show with you?”

I said, “WHAT are you talking about?”

She said, “You said you’re going to be in First Fashion Friday!”

“Mommy’s not in the fashion show,” I told her, “Mommy’s going to be talking at First Fashion Friday.”

She shot me a look: oh, talking. Again.

That got me thinking—why am I talking at First Fashion Friday? Well, Melissa Chang, marketing diva at Aloha Tower Marketplace, asked me to, because their theme for tomorrow night’s event is finding your style. After all, fashion and home design and décor really are intrinsically related.

Although style in fashion changes much more rapidly than it does in home design, the latter does evolve. You’re still layering colors, textures, fabrics. There are a lot of similarities. But it’s really interesting that there are a lot of women who have confidence in their sense of fashion, but are morbidly afraid to make any updates to their home.

I can relate, because I was one of those women. What I want to do tomorrow is show people, in my allotted 15 minutes, that there are ways to not only find your style, but mix your styles to create a more evocative, interesting and personal space. I’m excited—I’ve got all my props ready, quick lessons planned out, it’s going to be a real info-packed show-and-tell!

So come watch the whole shebang tomorrow night, including some real models doing their work in the finale fashion show. There’s going to be lots of fun and giveaways. We’ll be at Aloha Tower Marketplace in the center atrium from 6 p.m. I promise you’ll learn some tips about finding your style!

Back to Nicki. She looked so disappointed that to make her feel better, I let her sashay around the living room in my high heels, hardwood floor and all, and told her, “You know what? There’s only room for one supermodel in this family, and that’s you, Nicki!”

What a day!

Things are still not fixed with the blog, so be patient with us. The Advertiser is working on it, and hopefully I’ll be able to hear from you soon. But argh! I wish that were the worst of it.

Our big RSVPstyle Invitation to Design workshop is coming up in a month. This is a huge production for a small company—we teach hundreds of people how to use color and texture and style to decorate, with activities for everybody and sophisticated PowerPoint presentations thrown up on jumbo screens around the room. And as anyone knows who’s ever done an event like this or built or remodeled a home, the devil is in the details! After doing it a number of times, it should get easier, right? But IT DOESN’T! There’s always a new set of challenges.

Here’s what I’m dealing with. We’ll be at a new venue, Dole Cannery ballrooms. The people are absolutely great. However, we didn’t realize when we booked the ballroom that the built-in stage and large columns would pose such a problem. We thought we could work around them.

Recently we took our team on an onsite visit to plan the logistics and surprise, surprise! While this ballroom can ordinarily accommodate well over 400 people, with our need for three jumbo screens that can be clearly and comfortably seen from every seat and a stage capable of rear projection—which we initially understood was going to be possible—it now looks like we’re not going to be able to get as many tables in there as we’d hoped.

Bottom line: we’ve got to rent our own stage, reconfigure the three jumbo screens and redo the table layout. We always try to put on a great show and make sure everyone has a great seat. We do not want to sacrifice the quality level that people are accustomed to.

Just as any good contractor or professional would, you’ve got to roll with the punches. No expletive here, life happens. Or as Tim Gunn would say on Project Runway, make it work. So that’s what we’re going to do. But before we do that, let me vent this one time: AAARGGHHH!!!!!

Behind the Scenes: KITV, false eyelashes and a happy girl

How do these newscasters do it? They have to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed so early in the morning. On the other hand, I’m still recovering from Wednesday’s segment on KITV. Here’s the story.

Every other Wednesday, I’m on KITV’s morning show with Mahealani Richardson and Dan Meisenzahl, giving home style tips. I’m on at 6:45, so I try to get there at 6. Translation: I need to be up by 5, because it takes me a long time to guzzle my coffee and put on these impossible false eyelashes, which I don’t quite have the hang of yet.

Anyone who knows me knows I love makeup. I’ve been hooked since I was 13 years old and discovered strawberry Lip Smackers. But for TV, you have to spackle a lot more on just to look like your normal self. For me that means eyes that look like Tammy Faye.

This week I had to wake up at 4:30 because my daughter Nicki wanted to go in with me. She was starting school the next day, so this would be her last opportunity to see Mommy on TV. I got up extra early to get myself ready and feed her breakfast.

We arrived at the station a little after 6 and waited in the wings while Mahealani did the newscast. Nicki was enthralled. She’s such a performer that she can’t wait to be on TV someday. To Nicki’s disappointment, Dan was not there. He was away on assignment. She loves Dan! But don’t tell Mahealani that!

When it was my time to get set up, I laid out my area rugs, and Nicki my helpful assistant snapped some great behind-the-scenes photos.

My topic for the day was shopping with focus, and focusing on how to find the right area rug. Here are a couple of tips:

Tip #1: If you have a sofa you need to tie into, take a cushion from the sofa when you go shopping—you’ll save yourself a lot of guess work. I used a sample of a dark green fabric.

Tip #2: Don’t go for the obvious tie-in and look for a green area rug. Find one that has some green as its secondary or accent color. This way, the sofa will not get lost: instead, it will accentuate the green in the rug and your room will begin to feel much more pulled together.

Tip #3: Don’t let your patterns fight with each other! If there is a lot of pattern on your sofa, tone it down in the rug. By the same token, if you want a fabulous statement rug with lots of color and interesting designs, top it with a more understated sofa. Let one or the other have top billing.

Before you knew it, the segment was over. Boy, do five minutes go by fast when you’re trying to get all that information in. Mahealani was great enough to call Nicki in at the end for a little face time, so she got bragging rights to share at school.

We were out of there by 7. Mission accomplished: I got to share a few tips, give my daughter a thrill, and finally take my Tammy Faye eyes off!

For more tips from Cathy Lee logon to http://www.rsvpstyle.com/.

A great idea

I know this may sound weird, but at times I feel schizophrenic. I’m constantly coming up with new ideas for our company—advertising slogans, venues, events, you name it—it’s almost like hearing voices!

The problem is I have so many ideas and as a young company, we have a small staff that hears about them all the time. Everyone laughs when I say, Ooh, I just had an idea! So I’d been trying to come up with a way to be able to bounce ideas off of people, get feedback and unbiased opinion and constructive criticism. But who? And how? These people would need to truly understand RSVPstyle and our mission.

My latest and greatest idea came to me at our Shop with Focus event at Pacific Home Furnishings. I was told that 16 out of the 30 people there had attended all three of our last events—our Invitation to Design workshop in February and our Shop with Focus events at C.S. Wo and PHF. These were people like Randee Gabriele (remember Randee? She won the beautiful $10,000 pendant at the workshop and has flown in from Maui for every RSVPstyle event). All 16 are die-hard, true-blue supporters.

What better group to get this input and feedback from? Plus, many had already approached us to offer assistance and said they wanted to get more involved with RSVPstyle. All understood what we were doing and wanted to be a part of our growth. So I created our Inner Circle Club.

We kicked off with our first Inner Circle lunch meeting, at a home that I did on Waialae Golf Course. Litsa Weiser, whose family I sold it to, just happened to be in town and offered to open the house to us. The outdoor cabana and other rooms are featured in our three-disc DVD series; it’s also been photographed for various magazines and was featured in HGTV’s House Hunters.

It was the perfect spot: we could run projects and ideas past our Inner Circle and in return, offer some training in home design and décor as well help them out with their own projects! After a welcome mimosa toast, we took everyone on a tour of the house, complete with before-pictures and explanations of the whys, hows and challenges of the remodel and decorating.

It was a great day of learning and fun, and in true RSVPstyle, it was all about the win-win. So thank you Inner Circle group—thanks for sharing, caring and being a part of our growth!