RVA Fashion Week and Dress for Success Fashion Show
When my home town takes a pause to honor its local brands, designers, stylists, and also highlight a local nonprofit I have grown to love, I get a little excited. RVA Fashion Week is next week. I can hardly believe it. I documented my time very closely last year. Here is one of my favorite posts.
While I’ll miss a few of the events because of bachelorette party time, you definitely find me at the RVA Threads Trunk Show at the Broadberry on Thursday buying from my favorite local brands, the Jewelry and Art Gala on Thursday at Candela Books & Gallery, and most importantly, I’ll be at the Dress for Success Fashion Show on Sunday. In fact, I’ll be a judge of this recycled design fashion show.
I have worked with Dress for Success a few times before and the organization marries the best of my interests in fashion, philanthropy, and women’s empowerment. Watch the promo video above to get an idea of what to expect.
The final event of RVAFW will be Dress for Success Central Virginia‘s 4th Annual Fashion Show & Fundraiser. Each year Dress for Success provides hundreds of women with professional attire and all of the clothing comes from generous public donations. Occasionally, the charity receives donations that are not appropriate for work, however, they believe every article of clothing has a purpose so in 2012, Dress for Success Central Virginia hosted the first Recycled Fashion Show and challenged local designers to create runway worthy designs from their collection of unworkable clothes.
Each year’s event celebrates a new theme. This year’s theme is “Untailored Elegance.” DFS is defining ‘untailored elegance’ as garments with an edge or perfectly imperfect outfits. Untailored Elegance intends to captivate the audience with a diverse range of fashion, art, and style.
As the late Coco Chanel famously said, “Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress!”
According to Coco, elegance has nothing to do with being flashy or wearing expensive dresses, but is an innate state of being when the inside is as beautiful as the outside.
There are 3 segments to the DFS show:
Recycled designs, original designs, and styled professional wear which include:
- Recycled Designs: designers create up to 3 runway worth designs from the DFS collection of unworkable clothes
- Original Designs/Designer Spotlight: Designer can showcase up to 3 one of a kind looks that they created themselves (this is where local designers really show off your talent!)
- Styled Professional Wear: DFS receives donations from the community that go towards suiting women in the Richmond area. For this portion of the show, we ask designers and stylists to create outfits using donations directly from the DFS boutique.
Looking forward to meeting everyone and having fun on the judges panel!
Let me know if you buy tickets in the comments so I can be on the look out for you!
