What is RVA Fashion Week?

RVA Fashion Week (RFW) has been going on right under Richmond’s collective noses the past two years. When the event was in its salad days, it didn’t receive much publicity, but this year, RFW has expanded, attracting more talent, more sponsorship, and more attention in general from the media and local business trying to help RFW (and themselves) get off the ground.

April 4, 2011; 12:00 PM • by Pat Kardian

RVA Fashion Week (RFW) has been going on right under Richmond’s collective noses the past two years. When the event was in its salad days, it didn’t receive much publicity, but this year, RFW has expanded, attracting more talent, more sponsorship, and more attention in general from the media and local business trying to help RFW (and themselves) get off the ground.

“It was a cold December day…” begins Kearsten Feggans – model, stylist, and co-director of RFW – when she, Jason Primrose, and Jimmy Budd got together to discuss putting on a fashion show. Feggans and Primrose partnered previously on shows like A Night of Hope, Elevation, and Fashion Against Domestic Violence, but it was on that winter’s afternoon that the idea suddenly hit them: New York has a fashion week, Charleston has a fashion week, why not Richmond? “I was like, genius!” Feggans exclaims, recalling the day Primrose presented the concept to her.

With contacts they procured working on various fashion shows around the city and some help from Nightlife Promos Inc., the group put on the first annual RVA Fashion Week in spring of 2009. Most of the shows took place in bars and nightclubs where there wasn’t much to work with as far as lighting and presentation, but it was a start. “We broke even,” Feggans recalls, “so that, to me, was successful…We never went into it thinking we’re going to get paid from this, we’re just people who love fashion and want to see Richmond become a more contemporary market.”

As far as the second year goes, RFW’s director of photography, David Lee, describes the second annual RVA Fashion Week as, “more of an after-party with a fashion show.” [Oops! This quote actually was given describing the first year of RFW, not the second year. — Ed.]

“We don’t ever want people to look at Richmond Fashion Week and yawn, like we saw last year,” Feggans asserts, and she should be hard-pressed to find any yawns this April. Thanks to sponsors like Richmond Magazine and CBS 6 RVA Fashion Week has exploded. “It was probably like a four hundred percent jump,” says Lee, gauging how much RFW has changed from year one to now.

For one thing, there is no official director of the 3rd Annual RVA Fashion Week. Jason Primrose acted as director the past two years, but he only serves an advisory position this year. He recently moved to L.A. where he works as the logistics manager for Xomad, a media marketing and event production company. Now RFW is being run by a 16-member-committee, including Primrose, Feggans, Budd, and Lee, along with a team of fashion directors, production managers, stylists, promoters, photographers, and filmmakers.

Another major development this year is the Red Carpet Fashion Film Premiere at the Byrd Theater – a one-night film festival featuring the commercial shot to promote RVA Fashion Week, a brief documentary about RFW’s planning process, directed by local filmmaker Daurent J. Granger, as well as the top ten winners from the “What is Fashion?” video contest, which any one can enter. RFW is offering cash prizes for the first, second, and third place winners as well as 2 VIP tickets to the finale for the Honorable Mention.

RFW has also revamped its music. Instead of just tracks from an Ipod, the Finale on April 10th will include several live entertainers: D.J. Mass F.X., TT the Artist (“she’s like the next Nicky Minaj,” says Budd, co-founder of Nightlife Promos and co-director of RFW), Manifesto, the Handsmiths, and the Movement Specialists. Nightlife Promos Inc. is primarily a music-booking agency, so that helps.

RFW is also bringing on a couple charities, one of which is a national program called Catwalk for Kids that hopes to raise money for the Richmond’s Children’s Hospital by auctioning off handbags designed by celebrities and patients at the Children’s Hospital. Uncrated/Recreated is a smaller charity that just got started this year that will put on a show featuring fashions for pets and all the animals in the show will be up for adoption. “We are big believers in charity, all of us. We had done two or three shows for Fashion Against Domestic Violence and we’re just always looking for a way to get involved,” Feggans says.

RVA Fashion Week will run April 3nd through the 9th and tickets range from $125 for the Catwalk for Kids event, to $10 for the film festival, and the Uncreated/Recreated event. Overall, the price range is around the $10 mark, but they can go up to $30 or $40 in terms of preferred seating and VIP seating. “We’re not trying to kill everyone’s pockets, but at the same time, all of the production costs are going to be pretty high, so we just want to make sure all our bases are covered,” says Budd.

Music, movies, charities, and, oh yeah, fashion. RVA Fashion Week has something to offer for everyone. “We want the soccer moms from the West End showing up, we want the hipsters from VCU,” Lee says. Students, movie-goers, fashionistas, soccer-moms, you’re all invited for a week of Richmond, it’s fashions, it’s food, it’s music, it’s culture.

April 4, 2011 12:00 PM 0