MUF&D hosts 19th annual fashion show, announces new fashion major

The Miami University Fashion and Design (MUF&D) club hosted its 19th annual fashion show, “Mosaic,” on April 26. The show had 1,700 in-person tickets sold, 1,200 viewers on the live stream, 87 models (icons), 20 designers, 104 looks and 21 collections.

In addition to the record-number of designers involved in the show this year, a prominent announcement also made its debut: Miami will have its own fashion design program beginning in the fall. Currently, Miami only offers a co-major and minor in fashion.

In addition to the new fashion major, College of Creative Arts (CCA) Dean Ryan Fisher announced that there will be a new fashion institute at Miami. The inaugural director of the institute will be announced in the upcoming weeks. The institute is designed to build a strong connection with the professional fashion community, Fisher said.

“[The director] is going to build a strong connection with the fashion community in Columbus and beyond,” Fisher said. “Here’s to a thriving and growing fashion program at Miami.”

The announcement was met with resounding applause from the audience, including the MUF&D graphic design director, Sara Rose Detwiler.

“MUF&D has been this outlet for so many students who have only been able to do [fashion] through a minor,” Detwiler said. “Now they can really immerse themselves through this major, which is very exciting.”

The evening started at 5 p.m. with a trunk show, featuring various vendors and photo opportunities for attendees. There was a chance to get CJ’s merch, including the special edition CJ’s x MUF&D sweatshirt, a photo booth from Design Collective by Cintas, a table full of Poppi beverages, UP magazine’s latest issue and MUF&D merch with patches to customize it. There was also a separate section for VIPs, which included friends and family of the fashion designers, models and others involved with the show.

At 6:30 p.m., the doors opened to the runway, which was transformed to match this year's theme, Mosaic.

“[Mosaic is] all about finding the small things in life that are meaningful and build your story,” Co-Design Director Liz Bregman said. “[The idea behind] Mosaic is that it takes a lot of different tiles to come together to form the bigger picture. MUF&D is a small part of each of our lives to help form the bigger picture of our collective unit.”

The Collab collection was the first collection to walk to the stage. Collab featured six looks created by six senior designers and models, following the Mosaic theme. This included Co-Design Directors Ian Kellogg and Bregman.

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“[For the Collab collection, Kellogg and I] settled on uses of colors, textures and different silhouettes that are very unique to each designer but have small overlaps,” Bregman said.

This year, the Collab collection also featured jewelry made by nine advanced students in the jewelry department.

“It's a really great opportunity to help integrate fashion a little bit more within CCA,” Bregman said. “It's a great way to represent other artists at the show. [The jewelry pieces are going to] be worn during the show. Then the jewelry students are going to walk with us on the stage.”

Following the Collab collection, the rest of the collections walked, one after another. Every collection had three to eight looks and music specifically picked for each one.

Bregman’s collection featured eight looks centered in silk, denim, brown fabrics, and pops of red. A few of the pieces included a red romper, monochrome sets, menswear and a denim corset top with a white flowy skirt.

Kellogg’s collection was the last to walk and featured exclusively menswear, with eight looks in total. Most of his looks featured jackets and tees with styled pockets. While most of the colors were earthy greens, there were pops of purple and red.

“I really enjoyed seeing how, as a collection, the same designer had made a bunch of pieces that [were] very cohesive,”sophomore audience member Ella Skolnicki said. “You could tell, ‘Oh, these things go together.’ That was cool to see how certain elements went together.”

Sophomore designer Janel Bartee created a collection inspired by ethereal space and the fifth element, aether: an idea formed by Aristotle. She said that aether can embody different celestial bodies, and she has been working on this collection since October.

“It took so much preparation to get here,” Bartee said. “It's amazing to finally walk on stage and see everything, but it's a little overwhelming.”

In the end, the show left audience members in awe.

“It was amazing,” first-year Annie Bame said. “It was so impressive. I didn't really know what to expect, because this is [my] first time here, but [MUF&D] did such a good job.”

mulforsj@miamioh.edu