Between interviews for internships at Alexander McQueen and Zac Posen, fashion students are feverishly steaming skirts and stitching hems for their end-of-year runway shows.
In Chicago none is more hotly anticipated than The Walk, the School of the Art Institute’s annual fashion show and benefit gala the evening of May 8 at Millennium Park.
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The evening’s emcee will be Gloria Groom, curator at the Art Institute of Chicago who oversaw the blockbuster exhibit “Impression, Fashion and Modernity,” whose three stops in 2013 included Paris’ Musee d’Orsay and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Pioneering fashion blogger, filmmaker and journalist Diane Pernet, of A Shaded View on Fashion, will fly in from Paris to receive the SAIC’s Legend of Fashion award.
“Diane has been on our short list of Legend of Fashion honorees for quite a while,” Department Chair Anke Loh said. “She is an innovator and a true interdisciplinary artist; she has the qualities we impart on our students. Diane was a designer herself and transitioned to becoming one of the most well-respected critics and filmmakers in fashion.”
The final of four stagings of SAIC fashion students’ work that day, The Walk will include Claudia Hart’s performance of “The Dolls.” Hart is an associate professor of film, video, new media and animation at SAIC.
The students’ work won’t disappoint, Loh said. (A well-placed source highlighted seniors Kaleigh Moynihan and Zhi Chen and juniors Eda B. YoruImazoglu and Franky Tran as ones to watch.)
“With this year’s theme — an exploration of alchemy: transformation and seeing the unseen — we will see some amazing avant garde designs,” Loh said.
Tickets for the dress rehearsal at 9 a.m. cost $40. Tickets for the noon and 3 p.m. shows are $75. The Walk starts at 5:30 with cocktails; the program begins at 6:30. Tickets for The Walk start at $500. All shows are at Chase Promenade North, 201 E. Randolph St. See SAICfashion.org.
On May 10, Pernet will screen 21 short fashion films and hold a Q&A with the audience at 1 p.m. May 10 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St. Tickets are $11.