Article By William Kustiono
Photo credit: Nolcha Fashion Week
On September 11, Nolcha Fashion Week began in New York City. Nolcha Fashion Week is an award winning event, held for an entire week giving independent fashion designers the opportunity to showcase their collections to a global audience of press, retailers, stylists, and industry influencers.
Nolcha Fashion Week: New York has built an acclaimed reputation as a hot incubator of new fashion design talent and is officially listed by New York City Economic Development Corporation; offering a range of cost effective options to increase designers recognition and develop their business.
The successful showcase consistently receives positive media coverage including features in Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Lucky, NBC, MTV, and Forbes; and supported by brands including Coca-Cola, RUSK, Vitamin Water, America Airlines, Don Q Rums, and Landrover.
Several celebrities attended the event to show their support. Guest appearances include supermodel Christy Turlington, actresses Jennie Garth and Kelly Rutherford, and America’s Got Talent judge Melanie Brown.
In the afternoon, a runway show was presented by designer Katty Xiomara. Xiomara established her line in 1999 and debuted in the Fashion & Technology in Florence (Italy). Her work has been published in several international editions like: Design Secrets – Rockport; Boxed and Labelled – Gestalten; The Big Bok of Bags, Tags, and Labels – Collins; Urban Fashion Flavor – Monsa.
Following Katty Xiomara’s runway show, were other designers (Oiselle, the Vanity Project, Intrepid by Ao’c, Karo Swimwear) and their runway show. One particular runway show that was unique was Project Subway’s runway show.
Project Subway is an event sponsored by Subway, the sandwich food chain. They presented a runway show on Wednesday to celebrate their SUBtember’s $5 Foot-long promotion.
Project Subway challenged designers to create outfits made entirely out of anything found at subway restaurants, such as sandwich wrappers and napkins. The winning designer would receive a free year’s supply of subway sandwiches and will have their creation displayed at a subway restaurant located in midtown Manhattan on Saturday, Sept. 14 until Sunday, Sept. 15.
The judges of Project Subway were gold medalist Nastia Liukin; America’s Got Talent judge and Spice Girl Mel. B; Project Runway alum from Season 2 and 6 of All-Stars, Althea Harper; media personality and star of Style Network’s City Girl Diaries, Raina Seitel; Miss. Connecticut 2013, Lori Ann Marchese; and the iconic subway spokesperson, Jared Fogle.
The winner of Project Subway was Danilo Gabrielli. He is an established Italian designer who received a standing ovation for his “late ‘60s, early 7’70s”- era style SS14 collection. He prides himself on designing “classic, structured and elegant” pieces. Danilo Gabrielli’s mission is to design beautiful, timeless designs for women that allow them to feel elegant and confident while being guided by a combination of rustic Italian beauty and classic luxury. During his standout closing show, supermodel Coco Rocha, and “The Real” cohost Jeannie Mai applauded his work. Danilo made an announcement and granted the 10,000th wish for Make-A-Wish Metro New York to 13-year old Katherine fighting leukemia.
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