The Fashion Industry Studies Club hosted “Garden of Couture” Fashion Show at the Brown Family Amphitheater, from 12-4 p.m. on April 6th.
The event hosted clothing collections made from students, with student models..
Scotlynn Perdue, president of the Fashion Industry Studies Club and third-year fashion student at Ball State said that the fashion show has been a part of student life.
“It is kind of a tradition to do a fashion show at Ball State. We have done one every year for the past few years.” Perdue said.
The theme for the show had a garden aesthetic to it, symbolizing environmentalism in the fashion industry.
“The club made the ‘garden of couture’ the theme, just so we can have a general theme. It sprang out as we are big on recycling and sustainability in the fashion industry,” Perdue said..
The event also hosted clothing resellers and art vendors. Luke Corey, (thriftsfinds._), is a vintage clothing reseller and second-year architecture student. “My process is going as much as I can when it comes to thrifting, even when you think there’s nothing, you never know when someone else restocks, so I make sure to go as much as possible.” Corey said.
Perdue said the fashion show for 2024 is unique due to it being larger than usual.
“We have never had an event this big of a venue and for the amount of people that went to it.” Perdue states.
Before the start of the fashion show, Northwest, an indie rock band from Northwest Indiana, (Northwest219) performed several songs from their previous bodies of work at the Amphitheater as well as some unreleased songs from their upcoming album, scheduled to be released in September.
Models went through days of preparation. One of the models for the show, Hayden Gorman, a second-year economics student, explained how it went to prepare himself for the show.
“I came out for my friends, Olivia Camblin and Keith Kaszycki, who are displaying their collections. I'm having a good time [since] it's been like two weeks honestly of preparations in terms of the styling, fitting, etc,” Gorman said.
Olivia Camblin, a second-year fashion student and one of the fashion designers for the show, described her preparations for the show as having the models showing off her clothing pieces.
“It was stressful trying to coordinate all the ensembles trying to make sure each piece flowed well, and there's some element of compatibility or collaboration between everybody but overall, it wasn't crazy. It was really fun,” Camblin said.
Camblin said even though this was her first time showing off her clothing collection for the fashion show, the anxiety that surrounded it made the experience in terms of determination.
“ If you’re scared or nervous to show off what you created, just go for it and do it because it’s worth it,” Camblin said.
Contact Jose Padilla and Zach Gonzalez with comments at JPadilla4@bsu.edu and zachary.gonzalez@bsu.edu.