The annual VCUarts Fashion Event is the culmination of creative vision and technical skill for the Department of Fashion Design + Merchandising students. This event, held at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), features a one hour runway show, a window installation, and videography highlighting the original work of emerging design and merchandising talents before an audience of 400+ industry professionals, family, sponsors, and community members. Each year, a guiding theme is chosen for the event. This year the theme was “evoke.”
For the 2025 theme “evoke,” we drew inspiration from the lingering impact and dreamlike quality of memories and emotions. The show’s visual identity employed archival photographs from past shows, video footage of current students working, a dynamic typography based on over and underexposure in photography, atmospheric gradients in deep purples and blues, and the strategic use of negative space to create a sense of emergence and ephemerality. Through this carefully crafted visual language, we invited the audience to engage more deeply with the students’ work, considering not just the finished garments but the emotions, memories, dreams, and hidden narratives they may evoke.
A special thank you to the generous supporters of the 2025 fashion event:
Runway Sponsors
Anonymous
Melanie Trent De Schutter
Kieran Donahue & Joseph Marinucci
Our Life by Stella’s
Pam Royall
Christine & Tony Strange
Deborah & Thomas Valentine
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Reception Sponsors
Victoria and Charles Bleick
Rejena Carreras
Nita & Jack Enoch
Rachel Grove Dalton
Marie Kimmel
Karen & John Palen
Tracy & Tom Stallings
The Valentine
Fashion Partners
Lloyd & Art Backstrom
Patricia Brown & Robert Bierly
Debra & David Fitzgerald
Frances Kahn
Virginia & Steve Harvey
Sharon Larkins-Pederson
Sandra Mihaloff & Philip Klaus
Heidi Nel & Emily McAnelly
Candance Osdene
Alexandra & Brock Saunders
Schroder Davis Law Firm, PLC
Gail & John Jay Schwartz, 1st Ultimate Ram
Tara Silver Malyska
The Pink Lady Shop
Verdalina
Meredith Weiss
Sandra & Tyrone Wilkins