2015 Fashion Show kills the catwalk
Written by Savannah Rake and Anthony O’Baner
Photos by Angie Stong and Danielle McGotty
All the styles of SCAD shined this Saturday, May 16, as students and faculty merged in the SCAD Museum of Art and its surrounding courtyard to see and be seen at the annual SCAD Fashion Show. Both the 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. shows sold out, making the few tickets that would become available at the door highly coveted as parents and students scrambled to claim their spot at the one-night only fashion event of the year. More than 60 of SCAD’s graduating class collaborated to make the show possible in an emotional night that brought their clothes and accessories to life.
“It was absolutely surreal,” said Mary Ann Kafati, a fourth-year fashion design major from San Pedro Sula, Honduras. “It finally felt like it’s actually done, like it’s actually real. It’s not fabric anymore, it’s actually clothes you know.”
Kafati and her colleagues presented their senior collections to not only students and faculty, but to esteemed fashion icons as well. In the crowd were names like honored guest Vivienne Westwood, mentor to fashion students André Leon Talley, SCAD Founder and President Paula Wallace, America’s Next Top Model judge and runway coach J Alexander and Project Runway season four winner Christian Siriano.
“I thought it was amazing! Really cool, very different from what I thought it was going to be,” said Siriano.
This was the first SCAD Fashion Show that Siriano attended, and he had a hand in the behind-the-scenes work that brought the show together. Siriano personally mentored three of the students who showed in this year’s event, and said that he thought the work came together well in the end and was enhanced by the atmosphere.
The music that accompanied the show was full of heavy bass that pumped through the inside of the museum. Heads turned when the lights rose to full brightness, and the collective murmur of voices lowered to a collective whisper as the eyes of the audience focused on the garments.
“My favorite was Kate Shliep’s,” said Lindsey Perlstein, a fourth-year fashion design major from Carmel, Indiana. “She was in my senior class, so we were working together the whole time. The whole background to her collection is just amazing and the work she put into it was just inspiring.”
Though the night was dedicated to fashion, not only fashion students drew inspiration from the event.
Alvieno Stinson, a first-year painting major from Power Springs, Georgia “thoroughly enjoyed” the show, particularly “Cumming”, Georgia native Emily Seifert’s collection, who he said reminded him of a creative love child between Basquiat and Jackson Pollock paintings.
“It was very inspirational to me, actually, as a painter because now that I’m looking at the designs I can incorporate the feeling inside of my paintings,” said Stinson.
The show ended with a standing ovation, and a final walk down the runway. It wasn’t models and high fashion that took the stage in the final walk, but the designers who took their turn being seen. Many of them held hands, smiling and waving to those who they recognized in the audience. Some even high-fived members of the crowd who remained standing until the designers made their way down the entire runway.
The Fashion Show marks the last time that some of these designers will show off their work for a SCAD event.
According to Kafati, “this show is the perfect way to end four years at SCAD.”
