‘Confluence’ fashion show at Lincoln Center created by CSU students

Junior business administrations major, Kelsey Peirson poses on stage during the Confluence fashion show Thursday night. (Photo credit: Austin Simpson)

A “Confluence” of student designers, models and a variety of outfits will come together to create this year’s fashion show at the Lincoln Center Friday.

A “Confluence” is the flowing together of rivers. For this fashion show, the theme of “Confluence” represents the final coming together of senior students to produce and execute the show.

“We have everything from maternity wear to yoga wear, (from) men’s and women’s high fashion, to lingerie,” said Grayden Roper, fashion show co-director and senior apparel and design major.

The fashion on the runway is created by junior and senior designers, who have to design and construct a four or five-piece line that is runway ready over the course of one semester.

For many seniors, this is the last time to work alongside their peers before venturing into their careers.

“A lot of the designers have been in classes together for four years now,” Roper said. “This is kind of your last design before a lot of people go out of the country, go to New York or Los Angeles, and everybody spreads out. It is kind of that last ‘We did it. We made it through all those late nights in the lab.’ And although everyone’s style’s a little different, it’s all coming together into one big show.”

For apparel and merchandising major Lauren Lotspeich, her design concentration requires her to take pattern-making and draping, two courses which have propelled her into being a designer and model for the show as a junior. She says the most rewarding part is how the designs are enjoyed by the audience and appreciated by her classmates backstage.

“Designing clothes for the show and modeling in the shows is probably the coolest experience ever because you get to be backstage and see how everybody spent all this time on creating all of these amazing things,” Lotspeich said. “You get to see how they fit on the models and how they move on the runway. You get to see every model put on these amazing dresses or clothes and then look up and smile, and they do that five-year-old girl thing where they pick up their skirt and twirl in it.”

This year’s draping class will be adhering to the upcoming fashion trend “Offbeat,” which has been reported by WGSN, a fashion trend predictor which Professor Carol Enright says all Colorado State University students have access to.

(Photo credit: Austin Simpson)

“You get a very expensive subscription — $5,000 a year — and it’s free for students,” Enright said. “You can go in and say ‘what’s the fashion forecast?’ And it will let you look up to two years ahead.”

Professor Enright teaches event planning, the class that built “Confluence” from scratch in one semester. The tasks of finding a location, budgeting and promotion all fall on students under the co-direction of Roper and senior apparel and design major Kelly Allen.

“What the show is really about is all of these seniors bringing together all of those elements that (they have) learned over the years and putting it together into one cohesive line that describes (them) as a designer,” Roper said.

“Confluence” will take place at the Lincoln Center Performance Hall at 7:30 pm. VIP tickets purchased through the Lincoln Center include a cocktail reception before the show for $50 and include orchestral seating. General admission, without the cocktail reception, range from $10 to $25 per ticket.

Collegian AE Writer Sierra Cymes can be reached at entertainment@collegian.com or on Twitter @sierra_cymes.

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