No Time To Cry

After getting delayed twice due to the COVID pandemic, I dressed Lashana Lynch for the premiere and press tour of her latest Bond film, No Time to Die. Lashana is the first, ever, Black female 007 in a Bond franchise. She’s also just, great.

Once we were done with fittings, and packing, and getting every detail right, we shipped all of Lashana’s clothes to London for her big night at the Royal Albert Hall.

Except...the trunk never got to London.

It just, disappeared.

I’ve worked with FedEx for 20 years. Never, have I ever lost anything through the service, but that's something that is any stylist's worst nightmare. It just...doesn't happen.

Until it does.

So I have my client in London for Bond, and all the clothes I fit for her are missing.

My first feeling was shock. I just couldn't believe this was happening. We all went into crisis mode. Which for my team, means their veins turn to ice and they get to work. My team spent hours on the phone with FedEx, both in London and across the US. We had to find the trunk, and get it to Lashana as soon as possible.

Luckily, Lashana has a wonderful publicist named Bryna. Bryna was on it, tracking the trunk with us. We were all definitely panicking, but trying to keep our cool. We kept saying the trunk was going to show up. It’ll get here. No worries, it’ll be fine.

Eventually, I had to accept the reality. The trunk wasn’t showing up. It wasn’t going to get to London in time. It was time to start over, and prep again.

Keep in mind that London is 8 hours ahead of LA. So we were scrambling because we felt like we had no time, but also, we were a day behind.

This is when we started making calls. We called every showroom, explaining the situation to anyone we spoke to. People stepped up. Suddenly, we went from having no clothes to having a custom Vivienne Westwood gown. We prevailed. It worked out. We asked for help, and so many people helped.

There are so many lessons in this story. First off, when something goes wrong, you need help. You depend on your relationships. So always treat people with kindness. Because you never know when you’ll need them.

Secondly, stay calm. There’s always a solution. In this case, the solution was to start over. It wasn’t time to mourn the stuff we had no control over. It was time to move on, and go where we were needed.

After this whole ordeal, I texted Lashana thanking her for being so cool.

She replied, “Oh girl, I'm as cool as a cucumber. We can't let shit like this phase us because everything is always going to work out better.”

She’s right. So that’s the third lesson. The majority of the time, things do work out. They don’t always work out how you expect them to, but in this case, our final look was better than anything we had prepared.

Crises like a missing trunk allow us to appreciate the people we get to work with. Which I’m grateful for.

So be kind, move on, and be thankful for your relationships.

And also, always remember, there’s just…

No time to cry (especially over a dress!).

x

Karla

P.S. We found the trunk! Stay tuned for more great looks.