On October 6, 2012, Her Campus continued their College Fashion Week tour in Ann Arbor, Michigan, home of the Wolverines. The show focused on upgrading college life through fashion.
“Fashion in college is really important,” said Carly Potts, a senior at the University of Michigan who attended the event. “It’s a way to show your individuality, and you can’t do that through sweat pants.”
The show featured four important looks to give girls an escape from those ratty sweats that plague college campuses: class wear, gym wear, weekend wear, and formal wear. To combat boring style, Her Campus showed looks from LOFT, White House Black Market, and many other designers, all modeled by University of Michigan students.
“It was a lot of fun,” said Samantha Tinsley, a freshman who modeled for the show, “I’d never done anything like it before. It was a blast.”
How did all the glitz and glam come to be, though? For our models, it was a long day of preparation. Getting fitted for the fabulous clothes, waiting for hair and makeup, preparing their perfect model walks (they nailed it!) – it was a long, but rewarding day.
Stephanie Korona, another freshman model, added, “It was so neat to see the behind the scenes action, such as the fittings, hair, and makeup. It was probably one of the neatest experiences I’ve had in college so far. I’ve always been interested in fashion, so it was awesome finally getting a taste of the industry.”
Her Campus transformed Necto Nightclub into a collegiette’s paradise for the evening, with an HC step and repeat, a fashion runway and a candy bar.
“The candy bar was so colorful, fun, and delicious!” said Caroline D’Andrea, a freshmen in the audience. Each audience member also received a goodie bag filled with free Her Campus swag, Unreal candy, accessories, and makeup.
“I was blown away by the goodie bags that Her Campus provided us with,” said freshmen Maeve Zolkowski. “I thought it was really cool that they included a personalized Her Campus cup and cute little headbands for working out. Being a broke college student, I also loved all of the free food they included: I got a spicy chai protein shake, candy, and a coupon for free Chipotle!”
Once the lights went down and the music started, those months of work and the steps taken to perfect those model walks finally paid off. The first look: class wear. These “Pretty Intellectual” looks showed our collegiettes how to learn in style. What would we do without Her Campus? Um, show up to class in sweats and a hoodie every day. After the first look, however, class wear: upgraded!
Once class wear was finished, and we saw how we should be dressing for our 8AM Stats lecture, gym wear took the stage, not only giving us the motivation to go to the gym, but to do it in style (be a gym rat, ladies, not gym ratty!). The looks from the third set – our weekend wear collection – featured clothes from the Loft’s 2012 line, and one lucky audience member scored a $250 shopping spree to Loft to get the looks for herself. The final runway collection was formal wear, where models strutted their stuff in dresses from BCBG and White House Black Market.
Potts said of the formal wear, “All of the dresses they showed were so beautiful. It makes me wish I had a formal to go to!”
University of Michigan students didn’t just walk the runway- they also put on musical and dance performances. Hannah and Brandon, a guitar and singer duo, charmed the crowd with their soulful acoustic sound, covering songs and their own mashups from Florence + The Machine, The Black Eyed Peas, Coldplay, and many others. After Hannah and Brandon were performances by the K-Pop Dance Factory with their take on Gangnam Style. After K-Pop, the crowd was wowed by the powerful vocals of two of the members of Musket, a student-run theatre group.
Erica Avesian, a senior who not only attended the show, but also writes for HC national, said of the group, “Musket was amazing! During their Hairspray performances, I felt like I was at an actual Broadway show!”
The final group to perform was the “G-Men,” an A Cappella group featured in Her Campus’s “The 12 Best College A Cappella Groups in the Country” this past September.
When the evening was over and the University of Michigan girls trekked their way through the cold back to their dorms or to parties, the lights of Necto turned off, the models took off their makeup, and HC hit the road for the next show. One thing was for sure, though: Her Campus taught us a very important life fact: it’s okay to upgrade your life. And upgrade we did, all with the help of Her Campus College Fashion Week.