Retail Studies Organization displays fashion at Willkie

While campus was drenched with rain last night, spotlights in Wilkie Auditorium scorched the runway as the skirts of walking models floated above the ground.  

The elevated runway served as a platform for dozens of creations, ranging from corsets, to bikinis and ending with dresses. The finale of the show featured a run of ball gowns that overpowered the lifted flooring with their sheer masses of fabric.  

“Lights, Glamour, Fashion” was the Retail Studies Organization’s spring fashion show, one in many from their annual tradition. While fashion shows can commonly be used to introduce a designer’s work for an upcoming fall or spring season, this fashion show was a bit different. For Olivia Fischer, a designer with three pieces, it was a showcase.

“I was really inspired by Italian fashion because I studied abroad over the summer,” she said.

Before the show even started, the room was already filled with an audience. Jazz music reverberated over the chatter of the audience, bringing the vintage theme to life musically. The theme could also be seen in the models’ hair and makeup.  

Allison Matsel and Claire Williams are the “vice presidents of fashion show” for RSO. Matsel said that they wanted to play off the phrase “Lights, Camera, Action” for this year’s theme, an old Hollywood motif.

One aspect of the annual fashion shows is the unity that comes with them. Williams said, IU’s Apparel Merchandising Department is split between the retail students and the design students.  This fashion show acts as a link between the two types of students as both skills are needed to pull off such an event, she said.

“This is kind of the one time of the year where we can come together,” she said.
While the strong beat of the music and lights aided the adrenaline flowing through the room, the excitement thriving on the runway didn’t come easy.   

“Trying to make the event just look and be great is really challenging,” Williams said.

Normally, the show is held in the IMU’s Alumni Hall, but due to the hall’s recent renovation, the show had to be transplanted elsewhere. This was one of the group’s biggest hurdles in getting the fashion show runway-ready. However, what group members said worried them most before the show was what problems could occur at the last moment.  

“With any event, things are obviously going to go wrong,” Matsel said. The key, she said, would be finding those solutions as the problems pop up.

At the end of the show, all of the designers streamed onstage, and the relieved expressions on their faces showed that the vice presidents’ anxieties were not needed. Fischer strutted among the designers.

“Fashion design is just something that you have to be really passionate about,” she said. “You can see it everywhere.”