Everything that happened in Molly-Mae’s PLT fashion show behind the scenes documentary

PrettyLittleThing has spent the last few weeks releasing “PLT By Molly-Mae – The Documentary”, with three separate episodes of a YouTube “documentary” showing a behind the scenes look of the fashion show that saw protestors gather outside. The documentary gives us an insight into Molly-Mae using her 24 hours in her job as PLT Creative Director, and shows her alongside other members of the PLT team planning the fashion show.

The documentary shows everything that went into the fashion show – from designing the clothing collection and securing the venue, to teaching the models how to do the catwalk and making the goodie bags for the VIP guests and influencers. What it doesn’t show is anything to do with the protest.

In case you didn’t have time in your busy 24 hours to watch it yourself, here’s everything that happened in PLT By Molly-Mae – The Documentary:

Molly-Mae was in charge of the DJ, food and drink

In episode one of the documentary, PLT marketing director Nicki Capstick sits Molly-Mae down and tells her everything she needs to sort for the show. It is: Venue suggestions, creative inspiration, afterparty DJ, a performer, drinks list, appetisers and food. Nicki says this is “all on” Molly to sort.

Molly-Mae says this is “huge” and “on a whole other scale” to anything she’s done before. It kind of just sounds like what you’d have to do if you were having a boujee birthday pres.

But there’s a PLT events manager who does a LOT

Then in episode two, we meet Jade Kebbie, PLT events and brand experiences manager. Jade says: “When it comes to a show, my job’s really not done until the show’s over. Just working from concept phase to execution and then breakdown is essentially everything that I would do.”

She says: “So I work with every single team when it comes to the design, the aesthetic of the show, the logistics, where is it going to be, what’s going to happen, what are people going to eat. This is definitely going to be one of the highlights of my career. I’ve always wanted to do something in London.”

Basically, she’s doing a ton to get the show happening. There’s a mini-crisis where the date they want doesn’t work for their venue, and Jade’s the one who says “I’m going to have to make some calls”. Clips show her on the phone ringing up loads of different venues trying to sort it out.

There’s also Talia Johnson, creative manager at PLT. She speaks in the documentary about doing loads for PLT’s 2019 New York Fashion Week and says “this time it feels … a little bit more special”.

She says: “When everything’s confirmed, we’ve got the team we’ve got the models, but it’s now like, okay we need to put it all into place. What’s the run of show going to be? What product’s going with what model? How is that going to be matched up all together to make an actual show?”

There’s another crisis where the night before the show, three people are sitting on one of the benches and it breaks. They say each one is meant to seat four people at the event, and obviously don’t want any breaking during the show. “This is a huge problem”, Molly-Mae says. “It’s the night before the show, we need to source brand new benches to sit 250 people that we know are not gonna break.”

She laughs, throws her hands up in the air and says: “Time for bed! Not that I’m going to be able to get much sleep.” The documentary doesn’t show who ends up finding new benches, but it doesn’t look like it’s Molly-Mae.

The documentary doesn’t mention the protestors at all

Okay so obviously PLT’s documentary isn’t exactly a Netflix mini-series, it’s promoting PLT’s own event and clothes line so you wouldn’t necessarily expect it to reference the fact that loads of protestors (including Brett from Love Island) turned up outside the fashion show. But in case you were wondering, it doesn’t mention that this happened at all.

At the time, The Tab spoke to Venetia La Manna, who was co-leading the protest. She said there were recognisable influencers giggling in the queue to go in. She says she thinks this is because they feel shameful, “You’re queueing for a fashion show whilst people are protesting outside saying it’s unethical, you shouldn’t be there and by being here you’re supporting a highly exploitative brand so of course you’re going to laugh.”

Venetia said the protestors outside felt very safe and they weren’t told to move by anyone from PLT or the security team. “Security were happy for us to be there and they didn’t bother us,” she said. Even though the reception was mixed, Venetia said herself and other protestors felt confident in what they were doing and saying. “I’ve woken up this morning feeling proud of what we did”, she said the next day.

One PLT member of staff says that from a social media perspective they’ve “absolutely smashed it”, with a huge reach on Instagram and “trending throughout the day on Twitter”. The documentary doesn’t show any of these “trending” tweets, but if you search #PLTbyMollyMae on Twitter, a lot of the top tweets from the day are about the protest, including this from Brett:

At the time, a spokesperson from PrettyLittleThing told The Tab: “Any suggestion that the people making clothes for PLT or any other boohoo group PLC brand are paid lower than the minimum wage is grossly inaccurate.

“We publish a list of all our approved UK and international manufacturers, all of whom have been audited over the last 18 months, and we do not tolerate any non-compliance with our supplier Code of Conduct. We operate a whistleblowing hotline so people can share any concerns they may have and we work with relevant government agencies to ensure the people who make our clothes have their rights in the workplace protected.”

One of the most important parts of the show was making sure it was diverse

Molly-Mae says one of the most important things of the show, for her, was making the catwalk “completely diverse”. She said: “We want to see this collection and all the clothes on PLT on every girl out there. Every girl with a different shape, size, race, everyone. So it was so key that every model demonstrated that.” There was also a model on the catwalk in a wheelchair.

PLT staff say Molly-Mae is easy to work with

In the documentary we see Molly-Mae in meetings, giving suggestions such as making trousers less low-rise so that they’re more wearable for when people want to go for meals out.

Gemma Dunne, PLT buying director, says that Molly-Mae is easy to work with. She says: “Working with Molly has been so easy. She is so in-tune with what works for her, what she loves, what she likes, what she doesn’t like, which makes our job so much easier.”

PLT head of design, Christopher Parnell, designed the fashion show collection. He says alongside Molly-Mae they came up with “the concepts, the vibe, the feel for it”. He says “Molly is PLT and I think that’s why we work so well as a team.”

Molly-Mae says that days working in the office are her favourite days. “I love going in to the office and really just getting in to things. I can just go in, switch off and just focus on the job in hand and everything we need to be getting on with.” She also says she feels “honoured and blessed to be given this opportunity”, describing it as a “pinch-me moment”.

They literally searched ‘I love Molly-Mae’ on Twitter to find positive tweets about her

When they start talking about Molly-Mae in the first episode of the documentary, a load of tweets flash up on the screen about her. You can see from the bold words in at least two of the tweets that PLT literally just searched “I love Molly-Mae” to find these. Lol.

See it here: