While New York, Paris, and Milan host some of the most buzzed-about fashion shows, attracting celebrities and controversy at every turn, something else entirely is happening down in Florida. In Tampa, there's Christian Fashion Week, which is held to showcase Christian designers.
Christian Fashion Week was started several years ago by two couples, Jose Gomez, and Mayra Gomez, who once worked as a model, Tamy Lugo, who makes her living as a stylist, and Wil Lugo. The event was started to, as one designer put it, "Show the young girls in our church that you can be stylish and still have a strong faith." And while in the past having a strong faith meant, as the designer's husband bluntly stated, "[Showing girls] you don’t have to look like a slut,” the founders insist the fashion week is about much more than that.
Christian Fashion Week has put forth its true principles in the acronym CARE. It stands for contextual modesty, affordable, sustainable fashion, responsible use of natural resources, ethical hiring, casting, and labor practices. "“Those things are much closer to the heart of God than cleavage is,” Mr. Gomez told The New York Times.
Funds for Christian Fashion Week have run dry in recent years, though, and the event just wrapped up its last season. However, Gomez said, "This is Christian Fashion Week, and so there could be a resurrection."
You can read the whole feature over on The New York Times
[via the New York Times]
