Red Dress Fashion Show
Red Dress Fashion Show overflows Ballroom
Lindsey Smith
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Art walked Thursday night.
The fashion design and merchandising program sent 10 seniors down the runway in front of an overflowing Ballroom D crowd at the Student Center. Each student presented between seven and eight garments as well as a piece for the opening act: the Red Dress Collection.
But the event, which took its name from the kickoff to spring fashion shows in New York, served a deeper purpose than showcasing the seniors' final designs.
"It's to raise awareness for women's heart disease, which is the number one killer of women," said Travis Gain, the president of the Fashion Design and Merchandising Association.
The attempt to get the word out about heart disease began long before Thursday night, said Natarus Ramseur, a junior from University Park studying fashion design
Delta Sigma Theta sorority sponsors events every February for the American Heart Association, Ramseur said. The Red Dress Show acts as a continuation of that goal.
Gain said while the event obviously was not as big as the New York fashion shows, it's the same concept - models wearing garments created from scratch.
"It's not as serious. We try to have a lot of fun. It's not big names, but it's people that could be big names," said Gain, a senior from Fairfield studying fashion merchandising.
Every detail of the show was planned, from the garments to the lighting to all aspects of modeling: how the designers want their models to walk, how they want their faces to look and how they're going to pose, Gain said.
Jane Pivovarnik, a junior from Springfield studying fashion design, said art and thought act as equal components in the design process.
"It has to be beautiful and it has to work. You can't have one more than the other," Pivovarnik said. "That might be beautiful, but nobody can walk in it."
Gain said the hour represented an event of immense significance to the students.
"This is bigger than graduation. This is their big event. This is their years of hard work all in a single night, in not even 10 minutes," Gain said.
Pivovarnik said those who say they don't care about fashion, or that fashion doesn't affect them, are fooling themselves.
"They say they don't (care). But everybody wears clothes. So in some way, everyone cares about fashion," Pivovarnik said. "We may be kind of rural (in southern Illinois), but we can be pretty uptown."
While the senior runway was the highlight of the showcase, the other undergraduate students also displayed their handiwork. Juniors stood in front of live models, while sophomores presented denim jackets. Freshmen and sophomores displayed their designs on trend boards and Barbie dolls.
Other departments of the School of Architecture had items on display as well. Architecture students showed their cardboard tool projects, in which items were recreated as cardboard structures five times the size of the real object.
The show was a step in the right direction for the department, said Cathryn Studak, associate professor of the merchandising department.
"We're really starting to integrate out programs, in small steps, but we're getting there," she said.
Lindsey Smith can be reached at 536-3311 ext. 255 or lgsmith@siu.edu.
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