As we look forward to the future of fashion in Omaha, we center our priorities around uplifting our community. This has always been a pillar of investments made by OFW for the last 15 years. At our core, Omaha Fashion Week is a socially conscious organization with a strong mission and purpose - to serve as an incubator for fashion industry talent. We have had a hand in creating a thriving local fashion ecosystem where fashion designers, design students, and fashion entrepreneurs can learn to make a successful career in the fashion industry.
Each season we award one emerging and one featured designer the Golden Shears Award, which includes $7,500 worth of resources to help designers continue pursuing their creative dreams in the fashion industry. In addition, our panel of judges, who are independent industry experts, spend months reviewing the work of our designers, mentoring them, and providing feedback throughout the season to ensure they have all the tools they need to be successful.
This season, we are thrilled to announce an additional program in our repertoire to aid designers in turning their passions into their careers! We’ve teamed up with Buckle to give our designers a chance to put their skills into practice. Our new partnership with the billion-dollar brand, founded right here in Nebraska, is the perfect collaboration rooted in the heart of the Midwest. Designers will be offered a spot in a Designer Residency program where they will create a collection in collaboration with Buckle to be sold in a national market.
During our Fashion for Good, spring seasons, we love giving high school and college students their own platform to shine. In the past, we’ve partnered with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Metropolitan Community College, Omaha South High School, Burke High School, Kent Bellows Mentoring Program at Joslyn, Joslyn’s Fashion Arts Program at Yates Community Center, Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA), 4-H, and countless others to give young talent a platform to share their work.
OFW has developed a national reputation as the best place for young fashion designers to be nurtured, including the youngest generations of our community. With that mission at the forefront of our minds, we’ve also developed Omaha Fashion Camp with Develop Model Management. Every summer we co-host a week-long camp for kids ages 6-17 to learn from local industry leaders. Campers learn about everything from sewing and sketching to modeling, styling, and photography.
We’ve made quite an impact in the last 15 years of Omaha Fashion Week, and we’ve only just begun. Bridging the gap between creativity and career for people in the fashion industry will always be a guiding mission for OFW. We foresee the fashion industry in the Midwest continuing to grow, and we aim to nurture this community so that it can flourish and become something truly spectacular.
Thank you to everyone who has ever supported this mission, we truly couldn’t have done it without you all!