From boutiques to luxury designs, Syracuse Fashion Week highlights local designers
Courtesy of Heather Isabell
The three themes of the night — Spring Fling, Local Love and Lux — will come with distinct clothing.
There’s still one Orange to root for — The Daily Orange! Donate today and help us win College Media Madness.
A switch in career paths led Lisa Butler — who initially worked for Syracuse Stage — to create Syracuse Fashion Week, allowing local designers to share their work with the Syracuse community for the past nine years.
“Rochester has a fashion week, Buffalo has a fashion week, so I thought Syracuse needed a fashion week too,” Butler said.
Butler is the creator and executive director of Syracuse Fashion Week. This year Syracuse Fashion Week will host three different shows from Thursday through Saturday at Aloft Syracuse Inner Harbor, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que and the Washington Place luxury apartments.
Part of the ticket proceeds and donations made during the show will go towards the Food Bank of Central New York. Over the years, Butler said she raised enough money at fashion week to feed 40,000 families and plans to continue to use the food bank as Syracuse Fashion Week’s beneficiary for as long as she can.
Butler’s fashion journey began in 2004 when she opened Bliss Bridal Boutique, her own clothing and bridal couture boutique. Butler originally worked as a manager at the Syracuse Stage, where she became interested in pursuing a degree in costume design.
Butler has always been interested in fashion shows and began doing small pop-up fashion shows by herself around Syracuse.
“As a couple of years went by, people started to become interested in joining me because they had a line or boutique they wanted to show off,” Butler said.
A turning point for Butler and her role in the Syracuse fashion realm came in 2010. Butler, with the help of a few designers, put on her largest show at the Landmark Theatre called Syracuse Style. The show was a success, and in 2013, Butler made Syracuse Fashion Week her business.
Syracuse Fashion Week hosts events biannually, with one in the fall and another in the spring. This year’s spring show will feature 22 different designers and three different themes for each show.
The first show is “Spring Fling” and will focus on spring and summer clothes and accessories. The second show is titled “Local Love” and will feature only locally based stores and boutiques, and the newest show, “Lux” will focus solely on designers’ work that is not yet available to purchase in stores and boutiques.
Elissa Martin is a designer based out of Cicero who will be showing her brand, Altered Eco, at the “Lux” show. Martin is passionate about upcycling and creating eco-friendly designs. Most of her work comes from taking apart and reworking pieces that already exist and have been worn.
This is not only Martin’s first fashion show, but the first collection she has created with the intention to share her work with others.
“Lisa posted about looking for designers, and I was really scared to apply for it because it’s out of my comfort zone and I have just graduated from Cazenovia College not even a year ago,” Martin said.
Despites the nerves, Martin decided to email her collection to Butler, who loved how different and refreshing the pieces were from what is usually shown at fashion week.
Martin was inspired by birds-of-paradise, tropical birds native to Papua New Guinea and eastern Australia, for her line. She created her pieces during the pandemic when she wanted to “stimulate” and “entertain” herself with brightly colored clothing.
Martin is excited to see her work come to life on the runway when her models’ hair and makeup is done. She feels like she is not only fulfilling her dream, but helping models and stylists fulfil their dreams as well.
“I know it’s going to be a great show. When a model puts on the clothes and feels confident, they’re going to do their best on the runway,” Martin said.
Heather Isabell is the hair and makeup coordinator for fashion week and will be working closely with the designers. Isabell is in charge of finding a hair and makeup team, looking at inspiration on social media and practicing the different looks on herself before the show.
Isabell became involved with Syracuse Fashion Week through her love of editorial work. She is a bridal stylist and loves doing intricate updos for special occasions. Syracuse Fashion Week has given Isabell the opportunity to “step outside of her box,” she said.
The hardest part about Isabell’s job is finding hairstyles and makeup looks that can be done in 15 minutes. Between dressing the models and redoing their hair and makeup, she said the look needs to be creative but doable.
“In the beginning I was spending too much time on looks, thinking that I needed to go above and beyond, but that’s not the case,” Isabell said. “For fashion shows, the hair needs to complement the clothes, and it shouldn’t be overpowering.”
Butler is most excited about the “Lux” show that will take place at the Washington Place luxury apartments at 300 E. Washington St. Syracuse Fashion Week has never done a show at this venue before, nor has it done a show highlighting designers’ higher-end pieces.
Butler hopes audience members will walk away with the impression that there are many local boutiques and shops in Syracuse with unique and creative clothing.
“Syracuse is full of creatives and there is a great fashion and creative culture that is here, and I don’t think they get enough recognition,” Butler said.
Published on April 6, 2022 at 10:13 pm
