Capital! Style: Richmond Fashion Week edition

The city’s burgeoning community of designers, stylists, and event organizers put on quite a spectacle at last week’s Richmond Fashion Week. A mix of styles from local designers, independent boutiques, and mall shops were featured throughout the week at five shows in five locations: the Southern Women’s Show, Fab’rik Carytown, CenterStage, Crittenden Studio, and the Hat Factory.

April 27, 2010; 12:00 PM • by Tess Shebaylo

The city’s burgeoning community of designers, stylists, and event organizers put on quite a spectacle at last week’s Richmond Fashion Week.  A mix of styles from local designers, independent boutiques, and mall shops were featured throughout the week at five shows in five locations: the Southern Women’s Show, Fab’rik Carytown, CenterStage, Crittenden Studio, and the Hat Factory. The venues were just as diverse as the looks displayed, attracting attendees ranging from the pant-suited West End moms to the spirited, small-town fashionistas sporting their avant-garde haircuts. To be sure, Richmond Fashion Week was nothing like its counterparts in New York and Milan, and the crowds did have to snooze through several shapeless and overly-floral frocks. But for what little they got wrong, the week’s organizers got much more right: the gutsy hairstyles, the schizophrenic hemlines, the thumping music, the bright lights swinging to and fro, and the hearts of onlookers beating just a little faster than usual — in time with the rapid steps of models’ stilettos on the catwalk. Still in its infancy, Fashion Week was more impressive than any other two-year-old around, and without a doubt the event has the potential to grow into a real Richmond institution.

Here are a few highlights from this year’s shows:

Want more? There are hundreds here.

April 27, 2010 12:00 PM 7