My knowledge of the fashion industry is limited at best, with most of it coming from summer reruns of America’s Next Top Model. For a long time, whenever someone mentioned Oscar de la Renta, I thought of the champion boxer. So, covering a fashion show probably wasn’t the best idea for my fashion-challenged self. But I did…And my life wasn’t changed, but I did come away with a greater appreciation for the industry.

The Fashion Business Association at NYU held their fall fashion show yesterday night, showcasing several talented designers, a few of them from NYU. The highlight of the evening was definitely not the emcee, who was completely useless. Most of his time onstage was spent reading (or paraphrasing) what was already in the program, and the rest was spent trying to pronounce ‘Ghanaian’ and failing miserably. Despite the emcee and a few technical difficulties (the music abruptly stopped during one of the designer’s collections), the show was a resounding success and surprisingly entertaining.

Herrie Son, a CAS senior, had the collection that was the most…Interesting. I was somewhat confused when the first model walked out. She was wearing very conservative clothing and probably could have passed for an Amish person. In fact, Son’s entire collection looked like it could’ve been made for an Amish clothing line. Which was entirely out of place amongst all the other collections on the show. But I liked it, and found it amusing. At the end of the catwalk, where the models would do their poses, their final pose would be a gag. Like a sassy snap or a little dance. It was pretty funny until one of the male models turned around and shook his butt at the audience. That was just weird. When I caught up with her after the show, Son (who also modeled her collection) told me she came up with the idea. “We just all decided to do something, because the number one thing I wanted was us to have fun.”

The most humanitarian of the collections was definitely from Hemma Fashions, a creation of NYU grads Edna Bissoon and Cindy Gaston. Having both lived in Ghana, their entire collection had a lot of African patterns with a bunch of bright colors, made out of an African fabric called kente. Apparently it was usually used in clothes for Ghanaian royalty. But what made this collection (and the designers) particularly noteworthy was that Hemma Fashions sets aside a portion of their profits for La Yahoushua Middle School in Ghana.

Out of all the collections, the only outfits I thought people would actually buy were those of Jessica Chen’s design, the head designer for Andrew Marc’s collection of ladies outerwear.

Duda Ramos, the show coordinator and Co –Veep of the FBA, told me that she had been working on the show since August. Besides a liaison between her and the designers, she pretty much did all the work herself. She was very happy with the turnout (something which also surprised me…I didn’t expect that many people to show up), and called the show “a way for us to support the designers, and for them to support us.”
Overall, it was an interesting and entertaining event. Besides, they had free food, and free food is always good.

Highlights











Better in low light











Photos by Dean Stattmann