For the eighteenth year, Buffalo State’s Fashion and Textile Technology department is launching their RUNWAY show. RUNWAY will take place on April 26, in the Buffalo State Sports Arena. The show is student-led, with the help of some key collaborators.
The process into organizing the show is a group effort between multiple departments at Buffalo State. In addition to the Fashion and Textile Technology Department, the Art & Design Department, Africana Studies Program, Communication Department, Marketing & Communications Office, and Buffalo State Foundation all work to make the mission possible. Campus organizations such as the Fashion Club and Legacy Dance Team are heavily involved with the event.
RUNWAY is also largely made possible through corporate sponsors. Businesses such as Wegmans, Franco’s Pizza, and M&T Bank are all contributing sponsors towards the event. This year, RUNWAY has secured a local retail giant as their presenting sponsor. New Era, the billionaire, multinational Buffalo-based hat company, has agreed to sponsor the event.
Each year at RUNWAY, student designers are challenged to create their own collections in relation to the show’s theme. Seniors at the school all showcase their collections at the event, with the top five designers all receiving cash prizes. This year, there is a record number of twenty-two senior designers.
The theme for the show is Intersectional Identity. The idea behind the theme is to focus on our unique identities, as well as the elements of humanity that unite us as one.
Additionally, designers are asked to “explore the overlapping layers of identity shaped by race, gender, religion, sexuality, ability, class, and culture. (Buffalo State Runway)”
One of the senior designers, Ricky Watkins, spoke about his collection.
“My design is called Concrete Jungles. It is meant to show the different economic classes, ranging from poverty to luxury. I have four looks in my collections, each representing a different wage class.”
Another senior designer that is competing is Kennedy Hernandez. She connected the theme of Intersectional Identity with her personal experience with growing into her sense of style.
“The name of my collection is Enigmatic. My collection is about growing into your own sense of style and personality. It’s about accepting and embracing how you dress and how you present yourself no matter how different it may be from somebody else’s. Most of all, it’s about having something that’s uniquely yours.”
While student designers work tirelessly on creating the looks for the show, there is a student production team that works on the functional elements of the show.
The event is co-directed by Piggy Pignatti and Alexis Roth, both of whom are current students at Buffalo State.
Roth spoke about what her job as co-director entailed.
“We essentially run the whole behind the scenes of the show. There are designers and then there’s production, and we’re on the production side.”
Even between the co-directors, there are different roles towards organizing the show. Pignatti spoke about these roles.
“We both have different groups that we’re working with. I’m working with the creative aspects of it and she’s working with the marketing aspects of it.”
More than anything, RUNWAY is an example of how a local community can come together to create something major. Several different students, departments, organizations, and local businesses, all continuously work together to create an annual event that takes place in Buffalo’s West Side.
Tickets for this year’s RUNWAY show can be purchased at the door or by clicking this link.
The full YouTube video interview is also linked here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzpB3EP8xaA
