Rowan College at Burlington County’s (RCBC) fashion design program and the Cherry Hill Mall have partnered to host a fashion show featuring original student-design collections on Friday, May 12, at the mall.
RCBC’s The Program Pod, hosted by Jay Varga, featured Lisa Steinberg, program coordinator of the Rowan fashion department, Lisa Wolstromer, senior marketing director for the Cherry Hill Mall and RCBC fashion student MacKenzie Phillips earlier this month to discuss what people can expect at the show, and what they’re looking forward to.
“We could not do it without the models, we can’t do it without the students, we can’t do it without the instructors, and we can’t do it without this beautiful place (Cherry Hill Mall), so we’re so grateful for everyone,” Steinberg said.
Wolstromer explained how she needed to develop a signature fashion large scale program, and she thought about when the mall partnered with the college years ago to host a fashion show. She connected with Steinberg to bring the event back, and the rest is history.
“ … I think the fashion show is usually at this college (RCBC), so bringing it into a public venue where more than just college students and family and friends are seeing their designs [is] really going [to bring their designs into] an atmosphere where they’re going to showcase it to a lot of different people,” Wolstromer said. “It’s exciting.”
This year’s show will feature 90-95 garments on the runway, and starts at 6 p.m. in the mall’s grand court, located near Nordstrom. The event is free, but attendees must RSVP at [email protected] or https://www.rcbc.edu/events/2023-rcbc-spring-fashion-show.
“I’m so shocked and just overwhelmed by everything that’s been going on, I never in a million years thought this would happen to me,” Phillips said, whose original artwork is on the program flier for the show, as well as the mall’s website. “Before this class, I had never drawn a full body, just people’s faces.”
“I watched her progress, and she did,” Steinberg said of Phillips. “A lot of it was dedication. MacKenzie is not one to give up … If you look at her work from the very beginning to midterms to later on, it was all there.”
Although she had a lot of ideas for the show, Phillips described her four-piece collection, Sacrilegious, as one that was inspired by incorporating the gothic-renaissance era with Catholicism.
“There’s so many different ways you can go about it,” she said. “I think that with the heavenly bodies, I was just so inspired by all the gorgeous metallics and chain-bound materials,” she said. “It sucked me right in.”
Wolstromer hopes the fashion show becomes an annual event at the mall.
“I’m excited to bring it back, it was a great program that we did all those years ago,” she said. “I’m excited to make this maybe an annual program, and I think it’s great that we’re going to highlight up-and-coming designers.”
