Fashion Club Models a Brand New Event
Junior Vance Fleming, freshman Daian Phillips, senior Morgan Owners, junior Phanawn Bailey and junior Britta Nelson modeling yellow outfits from the African-American Cultural Gardens scene.
One Shaker club fashioned a new event, and it was stylish.
Fashion Club hosted its first fashion show in the large auditorium Jan. 29.
The show Friday night began with two hosts introducing the first scene, and every scene after that. Each of the nine scenes featured a collection of cohesive looks in categories such as fur shoes, denim, dresses that were donated to the show by the He Loves Curves Boutique and hats from Villain, a Hawaiian clothing company.
“My favorite scenes were the first scene and the last scene.” Fashion Club President Kamryn Bailey, a junior said. The first scene was named Blackout, and models wore all black outfits while the last scene featured colorful art-inspired garments. Fashion Club members, Shaker students and students from other schools were among the approximately 25 models to participate.
Freshman Myyah Husamadeen’s favorite scene was one that showcased clothing from He Loves Curves Boutique. “The one that was like, the girls in the dresses,” she said. “I thought her clothes were, like, really cute.”
Fashion Club is a new addition to Shaker’s already long list of extracurricular activities. The participants meet every Monday after school to discuss fashion-related topics and new ways to raise money and expand the club. “Generally we just, you know, talk about wanting more guests to come in to learn about the fashion world, because a lot of people want to go into the fashion world but don’t know what part they want to go into,” senior Fashion Club member Tyler Givens said.
According to Givens, Fashion Club is a place where students interested in fashion can learn new skills and get advice from fashion designers. “They do have guests come in who are doing what I’m doing, like the major that I want to go into, and that’s really nice because I get to learn more about it,” she said.
“Really we just, like, try to fund raise and we come together and learn more about how to do things that involve fashion and get more people involved.” Givens said.
The event’s title earned Fashion Club the attention they’d hoped for.
“I just want to know what they mean by ‘Underground Fashion’, like, I want to see what they’re going to bring to the table,” Garfield Heights junior Dalicia Thomas said. As stated by Thomas, Garfield Heights has a Fashion Club but have not yet hosted a fashion show. “I hope they surprise me, because I am a critic,” she said.
Bailey named and ran the event. According to Givens, the title, Underground Fashion, was inspired by youthful designers.
“We’re still in high school, we’re still young and we’re still trying to branch out and understand our own fashion styles,” Givens said. “So she [Bailey] wanted to keep it underground, like on the street, kind of urban, like different styles to come into it because when you’re young, you know, you can pull off more.”
“All the fashion is underground fashion,” Bailey said. “all the designers are people that are not really known in Cleveland.”
The $900 raised by the event will help expand the club. The members hope to develop some new fashion skills, including sewing.
“That’s another thing we’ve been thinking about,” said Givens. “If we could have a sewing, not ‘unit’ but, like, part of the club. Like, we learn how to sew with each other, or go to a place where we could learn how to sew. So there’s different things we’re still learning how to do.”
“I would like to put on another fashion show,” Bailey said. “I would make the rules more strict next time and I’d like to plan more in advance. I would make it on a Saturday not a Friday, so we have more time to prepare.”
Fashion Club has been hard at work for three months to make this event possible. “Since the show started,” Givens said. “we’d all come in and discuss when we could have a fundraiser and who’d want to be a part of the show.”
“I think it was really good,” Husamadeen said. “because we worked really hard for, like, three months. We never really got the auditorium for practice and then we just kind of made it work.”
After modeling in the fashion show, Husamadeen is now considering joining Fashion Club next fall.
“I think it turned out very nice,” Bailey said. “it’s a learning process but I’m proud of the outcome.”
