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.
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.
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Tess Shebaylo
Tess Shebaylo is a freelance writer, crafter, history geek, and compulsive organizer. She works at Tumblr and lives in Church Hill with her daughter, Morella.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
What is this blasphmey?
These models are almost shaped like real women! They have boobs and hips!
Very unprofessional.
Har har. Yep, that was one of the things I enjoyed most about it.
Tess, I respect you for responding to comments on your articles.
My first and overwhelming thought was, “Wow, hire a real set designer” (especially with the first pictures). But, then again, I guess it is Richmond- not exactly a fashion mecca.
The next-to-the-last picture… why cary a bag when you have one completely built into your outfit?
That 4th pic; I don’t know how innovative the fashion is, but the model is definitely making the most of it. Great picture for her.
Thanks Wolf…I try! I need to put a bug in the RVANews ear to maybe get some sort of a comment notification system going…then I think we’d all be better at keeping up with comments. But anyway. The show at the Corrugated Box Building was the biggest disappointment for me, especially for set design. I’m not quite sure what they were trying to achieve with all those ferns, and the awkward lighting. But the other two shows I went to looked great, I thought…and admittedly I’m no pro photographer.
i actually like the setting of the first two the best. no runway, no tacky carpet. i like that it lets the fashion do all the talking. those ferns are suppeerrr tacky! but i get that they were trying to do the grecian influences thing, so i understand where they were coming from.
all of them other than the first photo and the weird grecian stuff and the last two outfits are so richmond street chic! i love it! where do i buy that second dress?? ah it’s so cute!
They didn’t hand out programs listing each look and where it came from, unfortunately…so I have no idea where to get some of the clothes. Your best bet would probably be to email the Richmond Fashion Week peeps (their site is here: http://www.rvafashionweek.com/), include a link to the photo, and ask. I do know that a lot of the clothes came from mall shops at places like Stony Point, but some where from online boutiques and local designers.
Hey guys I am the media/press manager and head stylist for fashion week. Thanks for the article and comments. The second dress is from a local designer laurianda. The set with all the “ferns” was a grecian themed show.