We invited local designers to submit their original shoe fashions to be featured on the runway on June 14.
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Andrea Fischer (she/her) is a bipolar recycled fiber artist. Her immersive installations and sculptures ask viewers to indulge in an altered whimsical reality valued by recycled materials. Each detail is invested towards experiencing this sanctuary through more tactile senses beyond the eye; its true desire is to welcome all.
In his decades-spanning career, Doug Kacena has excelled as a celebrated abstract artist whose work has been the subject of a PBS Special, a textile designer of handmade Tibetan and Nepalese rugs, the highly-regarded gallery owner of K Contemporary, a studio owner, an art therapist, a provocative curator, a podcast host, a collector and a passionate advocate for other artists. He has also designed two official patches for NASA and SpaceX for launches to the International Space Station (ISS). Doug is a member of the Denver Art Dealers Association (DADA), a Board Member of RedLine and is on the Contemporary Collections Committee of the Denver Art Museum.
Meow Wolf Costume and Creature Designer Kate Major started her career making circus costumes for Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus and Cirque Du Soleil, but found her true calling making monsters at Meow Wolf. In an effort to minimize the epic waste of the fashion industry, Kate prioritizes using recycled and repurposed materials. Kate lives in Denver with too many pets (1 dog and 3 cats) and likes drinking very fancy tea in her spare time.
LeeLee James is channeling her engineering education, dance training and resourcefulness through queer, femme and Black identities into a wild and wonderful expression of her STEAM art through her YouTube series Twirling Tech Goddess. As a computer science major at the University of Colorado Boulder, James believes that greater access to technological information, skills and experiences for those who have been historically marginalized is of the utmost importance in creating an equitable future for all. She is also the proud Mother of the Colorado Chapter of the pioneering and iconic Royal House of LaBeija, and hopes to stimulate greater interest in STEAM for the QTBIPOC folks within the ballroom community.
Mirroring the patterns of nature and worlds unseen to bring you a vision of truth. 922 acts as reflection of your own creative light. Featuring repurposed textiles, patchwork and denim, each Nine Two Two garment is crafted by applying laws of energy and magnetism to create art that goes beyond what the eyes can see.
No New Friends Vintage is founded on the sustainable concept that shoes, accessories, clothes are our friends and we don’t need new ones. Founder Courtney Bareman-Stevens has always worked in the field of merchandising. After 10 years in Las Vegas buying for online retailer Zappos, she moved with her husband and wiener dog to Denver in 2019. She naturally transitioned into vintage full-time, seeking to have a smaller footprint, limit over-production, and keep more goods out of landfills. Find No New Friends Vintage daily at Garage Sale Vintage Larimer Square.
Ramsey Cotter is a Colorado native who comes from an eclectic family of wearable artists and interior designers. From an early age, she began collecting clothes and celebrating anything that involved fashion, art, music, and design. As a child, she hoarded fabric samples, ribbons, scarves, and her mother’s silk underpinnings. Her appreciation for handmade and well-made objects guides her hunt for materials. Her boots are her canvas for sharing her stories of color and material. She operates in a flow state, describing her process as often difficult emotionally, but spiritually magical. Led first by color and then by texture, with a heavy heart she cuts, reassembles, and repurposes the materials which she values as works of art in themselves. Inevitably, the pieces find themselves living together as grounded talismans inviting the wearer to take up intentional space.
Jack A. Weil, born in 1901, was the world's oldest CEO. He is famous for making the first snap Western shirt. It was intended as a design element, one among many, giving Westerners a fashion identity. While you may not ride bulls and be concerned with a bull's horn getting tangled in your shirt, why not be part of the Americana lifestyle enjoyed by rock stars, seen in film and worn by regular folks around the world? Rockmount has been making the world safe for Western wear since 1946 when the company bought a now historic five-story building in lower downtown Denver. Rockmount's signature Western shirt design with sawtooth pockets and diamond snaps is the longest running shirt design in America. Rockmount also makes hats and accessories. The flagship store at 1626 Wazee has boots too. Rockmount continues to operate in the same location for three generations.
Growing up in Vail, Jessica’s mother owned a designer shoe and bag store. This was where her love for the art of fabulous footwear was born. She has inherited much of her collection from her mother, who built her appreciation for vintage designer goods as well as drew her attention to the world of secondhand designer goods; Jessica can be found rummaging through estate sales, and vintage and secondhand stores. Jessica's collection includes: Chanel, Burberry, Miu Miu, Prada, Ferragamo, Louboutin, McQueen, Valentino, Jimmy Choo, Louis Vuitton, Valentino.
My creative mediums started with drawing and painting as a school child, then branched off into sculpting, textiles and fashion, and live performances. At the age of 16, after attending four different high schools and discovering traditional education wasn’t for me, I dropped out and got my GED and began following my passion for dance and costume making. After many successful years of running a performance team doing music videos and festivals and clubs, I found myself needing more and was given the opportunity to show at Fashion Week in Milan, Italy! When I got back from that showing, I once again found myself pivoting and I was introduced to the wonderfully weird world of professional wrestling. I found myself in the ring training to become a pro wrestler myself while creating wrestling gear. I now create mostly for the professional wrestling world for entertainers like Heidi Howitzer, Lonnie Valdez, Marlion Bishop, and Abadon!