Megan Redzia - 06/27/2025
Summary
3E Public Relations has been serving on the planning committee for the Behind the Seams Fashion Show for five years. Benefitting Table to Table, New Jersey’s first and largest food rescue nonprofit, the event takes place at Bottagra Restaurant and consists of a lavish cocktail hour, gourmet food and beverage stations, silent and live auctions, and a tented runway show featuring spring and summer styles by two clothing boutiques. Male styles are presented by Sal Lauretta for Men, a men’s shop in Midland Park that specializes in fine made-to-measure and designer menswear. Boutique 811, a women’s fashion boutique in Franklin Lakes that offers unique styles plus personal styling services, showcases seasonal trends for women.
The planning committee consists of all volunteer companies who dedicate their time and resources to help plan, promote and execute Behind the Seams. 3E PR was asked to join the committee to handle the event’s public relations and social media efforts.
Objectives
The objectives of our role in the Behind the Seams fashion show are to:
- Boost awareness of the event to help attract sponsors and drive ticket/table sales.
- Provide the event founders, sponsors and committee members with social media content to help promote their involvement.
- Capture event content that can be leveraged for prep-promotion during the following year.
Strategy
The 3E PR team developed pre-event content, including a press release and media alert to proactively pitch to local media to secure advance media coverage highlighting the upcoming event. We also developed a content calendar of social media content leveraging photos and videos captured at previous Behind the Seams events. The calendar is rolled out by the 3E PR team on the Behind the Seams Instagram channel and the founding partners are made collaborators to maximize the reach of the content. All committee members are also given access to the content calendar to utilize on their own company’s or personal social media pages.
As part of the PR and content strategy this year, we also organized a day for the committee to volunteer for Table to Table during their Tuesday food distribution program. In addition to being a great opportunity for the committee to come together and support the organization we all believe in, it allowed us to create a video and social media content to showcase the mission of Table to Table and how Behind the Seams attendees help to support it.
During the event, the 3E PR team captured video and stills of key moments to be utilized when developing the promotion strategy for Behind the Seams 2026, including cocktail hour, the silent and live auction, food and beverage sponsors, keynote speeches and of course – the runway!
Results
The 2025 Behind the Seams fashion show attracted over 300 guests and exceeded the fundraising goal. Through a combination of sponsorships, ticket sales, and the silent and live auction, Behind the Seams raised $320,000 for Table to Table which will allow the organization to continue its mission of collecting fresh, nutritious, perishable food that would otherwise be wasted and delivering it free to organizations serving the hungry in northern New Jersey.
