Flights of Fancy: Denver’s Fashion Scene Is Hot On and Off the Runway

Somewhere in the sea of athleisure and “Colorado Casual,” a creative undercurrent is streaming into Denver’s fashion scene.

“We have seen such an influx of new people who have come to Denver over the past twelve to fifteen years,” says Emily Lennon, president of The ONE Club for Creativity Denver. “They have brought elements of different areas to what they’re creating here, and it’s made Denver’s own look and feel.”

That look and feel are fresh, resourceful and unconventional, and you can see those styles on runways that have been popping over the last several years at shows raising both funds and awareness of the creativity and collaboration of Denver designers.

While this city’s homegrown fashion is catching attention as it evolves, there’s always been a scene here. In the early twentieth century, Denver department stores championed American designers, held runway shows and commissioned one-of-a-kind designs, while well-to-do residents brought fashion back from France and other countries. The Denver Art Museum’s ongoing fashion exhibit, Conversation Pieces, explores this history through a display of elegant gowns.

Brandi McMichael, founder of Fashion Denver, describes the Mile High City’s fashion scene of thirty years ago as “quiet,” but says that in the ’90s and early 2000s, designers were laying the groundwork for the colorful runways of today. “Even in the ‘90s, I remember going to fashion shows where Mona Lucero was having fashion shows,” McMichael says. “She is one of our OG designers.” McMichael lists other Denver OGs in the fashion community: slow fashion maker Brooks Luby, Equillibrium founder Deb Henriksen, and Trần Nguyễn-Wills, who owned and ran Fabric Lab from 2007 to 2009, and is now running for Denver City Council.

The “Do It Yourself” motto is big in Denver’s music and food scene, and that creed isn’t new to the fashion scene, either. McMichael, who started making purses out of paper when she was in third grade, went on to become a worldwide handbag designer as an adult in 1999.

“The internet was so new,” she says. “There was no such thing as Etsy. There was DSL. I built a website on Microsoft Word and launched it. Because the internet was so new, I ended up going ‘viral,’ as we call it now, and I was selling in boutiques in London, Paris, New York, Chicago, all over the world, just making these little bags.”

McMichael spent a few years learning about the fashion industry in L.A., San Francisco and even Paris before returning to Denver and starting Fashion Denver, a company that puts on fashion markets and events, helps designers and small businesses start their brands, and “turns dreamers into doers.”

“I believe we all have a fire in us,” McMichael says. “We all have something that we want to build and create, and my greatest passion is helping people to see that and help them along the way to create the tools that will help them succeed.”

Denver Fashion Week “has been crushing it for years,” she notes. DFW was launched in 2013 by 303 Magazine and has become the city’s largest fashion event, biannually featuring the work of national brands and emerging local designers alike. McMichael showcased her “Kingdom Work” line in last spring’s Sustainable fashion show at DFW, and will be emceeing the event’s Adaptive night on Friday, May 8.

“I think fashion is alive and thriving in Denver,” McMichael says. “One of the most important things to keep our fashion community really shining is to support each other and lift each other up. Life is too short, and Denver’s too small to be burning bridges. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and ask for help where you need it.”

The city’s clothing upcyclers are doing just that by creating swap events, adding a personal touch to old clothes rather than buying new ones, and teaching others how to do so as well.

Clothing upcycler Bucky Grant has been hosting free Stitch ‘n’ Bitch workshops twice a month to help people learn how to mend and upcycle their clothes. The next one is from noon to 3 p.m. on Sunday, May 10, at the Hadley Branch Library.

“I’ve been able to help a lot of people learn to sew, and to be able to keep using clothing and bags that they otherwise would have discarded for damage,” Grant says. “I was particularly happy to help a disabled community member finally put patches on a jacket they’d been wanting to tackle for ages, and to give them supplies to take home to work at their own pace.”

The truth is, people are getting sick of fast fashion — cheap clothing made in sweatshops, like Shein, Zara and Brandy Melville. Thrifting has become trendy, and the Mile High City has no shortage of thrift, secondhand and vintage stores like Strawberry Mountain, Regal Vintage and Goldmine Vintage. While South Broadway has long been the place to go for vintage, thrift and antique shopping, East Colfax Avenue is developing its own vintage scene, with more recent additions like Fever Dream Vintage & Modern, Scavenged Goods and Good Bones quickly becoming popular favorites.

And McMichael is all for people wearing the one-of-a-kind thrifted, upcycled and vintage garments that speak to them.

“Let your true light shine,” McMichael says. “The trend should be to not be afraid to express who you are inside and wear it outside. I feel like people are afraid to express themselves. They want to hide themselves. But we don’t need to hide ourselves. The world is brighter when we show who we truly are.”

“Fashion” might not be a word often associated with the Mile High City, but maybe it should be. Here are three upcoming shows to get you inspired:

“I went to my first paper fashion show in 2012 as a guest and was blown away,” Lennon says. “What I have learned from participating in it is the sheer creativity of paper. Paper is so versatile. It can be folded, sculpted, layered. I have seen people destroy it and bring it back. People use paper mache, they print on it, they paint on it.”

The Paper Fashion Show is hosted by the ONE Club for Creativity Denver, which gives individuals in advertising, marketing, fine arts and more the space to be creative together without the structures of their day jobs. “The first show was super grunge, there were like forty audience members,” Lennon says. “It was just an event where people can let their hair down and be creative, and slowly over the years, it has built into this amazing show we put on once a year.”

This year’s Paper Fashion Show will display about thirty designs created with paper donated by various paper mills to The ONE Club; most of the designers come from the Denver/Boulder metro area, and a few from surrounding states.

Denver Designer Lizzy Chitamitre, who designs bridal gowns for her company Nine Lives Bridal, is using iridescent paper to make a paper wedding dress for the show. “I love the crispness of it,” Chitamitre says. “When I drape fabric on the form, it’s so fluid. What I love about this is that you have these structural shapes that you would never be able to do with fabric.”

That’s why the theme of her dress is defying gravity. It will be modeled by a longtime friend who is a professional ballet dancer, and Chitamitre says she hopes the runway will feel like a ballet when her dress comes out.

And what happens once those designs have their say on the runway? Their creators often keep them, while others are displayed by the paper mills or the ONE Club.

Twenty percent of the event’s proceeds will go to Downtown Aurora Visual Arts to support DAVA’s arts education programs. Since the inception of the Paper Fashion Show, the ONE Club has raised more than $66,000 for DAVA.

“I hope people can feel joy in their bones after this show,” says Mary Medellin Sims, founder and executive director of Guided By Humanity, which is heading into its fourth season of the DFW Adaptive Fashion Show.

Guided By Humanity is a nonprofit organization offering health and wellness programming for people living with all types of disabilities. Its participation in Denver Fashion Week is a community engagement initiative that showcases designs made by and for people with disabilities, such as absorbent bandannas for drooling, chic outfits suited for sitting in a wheelchair, and clothing created for mobility and independence.

“The collections range from sustainable fashion to athleisure,” Medellin Sims says. “You’ll see designers who are incorporating more adaptive functionality, and you’ll also see folks who are doing some storytelling through their collections.”

This year’s lineup of designers includes everyBODY, Mad Drool, Be a Good Person, LaRoy Art, Holly-Kai P. Hurd, Cleft Confidence, Spoonie Threads, and GBH x Alyth.

“Some of the models’ disabilities are seen, and some are unseen, and same for the designers. We asked the designers to have a lived experience of disability when we were choosing designers, so everyone is coming with their own story.”

— Mary Medellin Sims, executive director of Guided By Humanity

This year’s spring Denver Fashion Week runs through May 9 at the Furniture Row Showroom and includes Sustainable, Society, Youth + Mommy and Me, Streetwear & Sneakers, Maximalism, Outerwear & Athleisure, and Swimsuit & Resort Wear nights in addition to the Adaptive night.

“In general, we’re redefining the runway just by being included,” Medellin Sims says. “Spaces like DFW have the leverage and the power to shift culture. When our community and adaptive fashion are included at this high level, it challenges some of those outdated norms around who fashion is for. When you look good, you feel good, and everybody deserves to feel good.”

It’s a new venture for the Empowerment Program, a nonprofit that connects anyone who identifies as a woman with resources for health, housing, education and employment. “We try to remove barriers so that individuals can live a healthier life and make healthier and safer decisions through trauma-informed, responsive, holistic public health services,” says Elizabeth Fisher, the program’s director of development. “We try to empower them to become functioning members of our society.”

All of the Empowerment Program’s services are free of charge, and the nonprofit is funded by donations and city, state and federal grants — all of which have recently been a challenge to secure. “So we’re thinking of creative ways to bring in some extra funding,” says Fisher. “We’d heard of condom fashion shows and were like, ‘Why don’t we do one?'”

ONE Condoms provided the Empowerment Program with 5,000 non-lubricated colorful condoms, and Empowerment Program participants armed with staples, glue guns, needles and thread are creating fashion designs with the rubber.

“They’ll also model them,” Fisher says.

Fisher admits that putting the word “couture” in the show’s title is a little tongue-in-cheek, but it’ll be a fun and funky way to promote safe sex during a family-friendly evening. “In some ways, it’s never too early to learn about the safety of condoms,” she says, adding that the Empowerment Program provides free condoms and HIV testing as part of its programming.

There will also be free condoms at the Condom Couture Fashion Show. “Hopefully, people realize that condoms aren’t scary; they can be a lot of fun,” Fisher concludes. “So why not pick up some condoms on your way out, and have fun however you want to have fun with them?”