Melissa Beasley, founder and executive director of Albuquerque Apparel Center, said she recognizes that there are a lot of creative people throughout New Mexico and wants to play a role in promoting those people in the fashion industry.
“The biggest event in the fashion industry is fashion week ... this is a premier event that brings notoriety and publicity for our designers as well as networking opportunities,” Beasley said.
New Mexico Fashion Week strives toward embracing diversity and presenting the wide variety of styles that can be found in the local fashion industry, she said.
“People who have never been here before think we’re only southwest, cowboys and Indians kinds of designs and we’re so much more than that,” Beasley said.
The 12 designers featured in the show range from students to celebrity designers, according to the Fashion Week program guide.
The Fashion Week event added something new to the show this year: a Fashion as Art exhibit and competition. Patty Boldridge, co-producer of Fashion as Art, said the exhibit was an opportunity for artists to step out of their comfort zones and create unique pieces that combine fashion design and sculpting techniques.
Boldridge said she worked with Meredith Lockhart, a fashion designer and the other co-producer, to create a dress made out of covers from “Cowboys & Indians” magazine for the exhibit.
However, she said the dress was not included in the competition because Boldridge and Lockhart wanted the competition to be solely for the artists.
According to the New Mexico Fashion Week website, the participating artists had to make extraordinary dresses from mostly nontraditional materials such as metal, plastic and rubber.
Many of the sculptures were inspired by New Mexican culture. One design was made from New Mexican license plates while others were created with local magazine covers.
The winner in the Fashion as Art student division was from Santa Fe Prep and the adult division winner was a businesswoman from Taos.
Gabrielle Torres, Miss Albuquerque 2014 and a sophomore criminology and communications major, hosted the three-hour event and said fashion week is about supporting local talent.
Torres also walked the runway as a model for A. Tsagas Designs and Montecristi Custom Hat Works. She said she enjoyed modeling during the show because she was excited to promote the designers and loves performing on stage.
Those who organized the New Mexico Fashion Week Runway Show are not the only community members supporting the artists within the fashion industry.
Paul Maldonado, a participant in the fashion show, said he attended this fashion show to support the New Mexico fashion industry and see all that it has it offer.
“I liked the whole experience. There were never any ups or downs [during the show],” Maldonado said.
Some of the evening’s most talked about designers included emerging designer Kenneth “K-Bobby” Edgar and celebrity designer, A. Tsagas.
Khadijah Jacobs is a freelance reporter with the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo.
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