I expected nothing short of Texas heat, cloudless skies and a unelenting sun when I returned to Austin from New York. My expectations failed to pan out – rather than warm days consisting of gelato and iced tea, it’s rather perfect hot chocolate weather.

In other words, it feels as if I’m back in the freezing Lincoln Center tent where we dressed models backstage. Time to throw on the layers!

In addition to assisting Lela Rose, we helped out designer Timo Weiland for his 9 p.m. show the same day (Sunday, Feb. 12). This time, I “dressed” male models since the show featured looks for men and women.

I wrote “dressed” in quotation marks because I learned that you don’t really dress them; they practically dress themselves. Male models seem to be satisfied with you simply handing them their garments and instructing them on how to put the pieces together.

Although I gained more dressing experience with the Lela Rose show, dressing for Tmo Weiland opened my eyes to the world of male modeling. Most of the models were stick-thin. I thought that male models possessed at least some muscle definition – I was wrong, at least for this show. Some barely knew English, therefore relying on Weiland’s staff to speak in their native tongues. French seemed to be the most prevalent language backstage after English.

Rat tails are in vogue, and male models seemed to know just when I was taking a candid photo, therefore making eye-contact with the camera and making me feel like a creeper (as witnessed in the photos below…).