2012 marks the 5th anniversary of the UNITY charity fashion show, and preparations are well under way to make it the best ever! This year’s charity is Playing for Change, an organization dedicated to creating positive change through music education.

Even though the show is two months away, UNITY’s experienced model heads are already holding weekly training sessions for this year’s runway models. This week’s theme was “All about me”  and focused on building up confidence and maintaining facial expressions. Justin Clarke and Ryan Arrendell, model co-heads, shouted out emotions or attitudes, such as scared, flirty, or nerdy, and asked models to display those emotions while strutting down the runway. The session continued with distraction exercises, such as people crumping at the end of the runway, as models tried to maintain composure down the catwalk. The objective was to teach models how to stay composed despite possible obstacles. Arrendell has experience in the matter; “The runway is unpredictable”, she says, “I’ve lost a shoe while strutting down—I wanted to stop, grab my shoe and disappear but I couldn’t, I had to keep going! That’s why we emphasize remaining confident and composed at all times to the models because well, accidents do happen.”

Don’t forget to check out behind the scenes footage of Unity model training sessions and stay updated with UNITY on Facebook and Twitter!