I made this one to answer to nothing but the runway. No price point, no bestseller logic, no thought of what would sell. Just presence, and light, and a room full of people who wanted to build something memorable together and a moment of legacy for each creative collaborator.

Most of my work is made to be worn out into someone's life. Unfolding was different. I built it to be unrestrained from commercial intent, to be a runway-worthy collection with real presence and cohesion, the kind of thing that exists purely to be seen under the lights for a few unforgettable minutes. It was the most technical collection I have ever made, and it was pure play.

Making something the shop would never ask for

It started as shapes. I drew vector forms in Illustrator and brought them to a company that laser-cuts plexiglass. They had sheets in every color, and I chose a palette of purples, grays, clear, and blues, with a couple of wild cards, neon yellow and pink, that I suspected might be UV-reactive. I was right about that, and it changed everything later.

Then came the tedious part nobody sees. Each cut sheet arrives wrapped in a protective film, and peeling it off six panels, each with around seventy shapes laser-cut into it, meant picking at every edge with my fingernail until I could catch enough to lift it. It took patience I did not always feel like I had.

Once the pieces were free, the real building began. I set up a Dremel on a hand press with a tiny drill bit and drilled holes into the plexiglass so I could thread sterling silver headpins through and invent my own riveting process, layer over layer. Between the layers I set Swarovski crystals, which held the shapes apart and gave each piece a multidimensional, sculpted depth. The result looked almost alien, like something out of a science-fiction film, and the crystals and vintage components I wove in gave it a high-wattage sparkle built to catch the runway lights.

That was the whole point. The collection was extremely technical, but it was beauty for the sake of beauty, made with the kind of presence that would be unmistakable the moment it walked.

The Fillmore, and a painting called Femalien

Unfolding walked two of the biggest nights of my life. The first was the Alien Life Fashion Show, my first year in it, and its biggest installment yet: ten designers, more than thirty looks, hosted by Knew Conscious Gallery at the Fillmore, Denver's largest indoor venue, to a sold-out crowd of over three thousand people.

The concept is what makes that show special. Each designer builds a collection in response to one of Kurt Redeker's original paintings. Mine was Kurt's Femalien, and the Unfolding pieces were made to answer it.

I got to pair my work with a local couture designer, Maggie Burns, who had just won 303 Magazine's Designer of the Year. I still remember our first coffee to talk about the collaboration, the instant connection and shared vision. Her final looks exceeded everything I had pictured.

Photo credits Teddy Gomez of Xposer Magazine 

The team for that show was hand-curated, and it let me work with talent I never had before. KJ Murphy led the hair with beautifully experimental looks. Corrine handled detail work and the best braiding I have ever seen. Nicole Marie and Bubz Medina worked their makeup wizardry until my models looked genuinely otherworldly. And the runway itself belonged to Denver's best: Karly Porter, Stephanie Manor, Masha Pichugina, and Lesia Bankston, seasoned professionals who endure long rehearsals and grueling hair and makeup sessions and never stop smiling. They always make me look good.

Behind the scenes photos for the Alien Life Fashion Show. Sources: Robin Fulton — VoyageDenver · Suzanne Simone — Poshtography

City Hall, a hundred dollars a minute, and the dark

The second night was the RAW artists’ showcase at Denver's City Hall, a sold-out crowd that the organization later called the biggest showcase success it had ever had across all its cities.

That one nearly went differently. We had planned to project onto a screen for my segment, but when we arrived, the venue had set up a massive LED screen for a major act playing the next night. My husband Kris, who directed our segment and created all of the visual content that played across that screen, went and found the tech crew in charge and, after some convincing, talked them into renting it to us for a hundred dollars a minute. It was worth every penny. His visuals turned our segment, the last of the night, into the one that defined the whole event, written up afterward in the follow-up coverage.

For that show, my friend Dawn Yukus made one-of-a-kind cut-out white tee-shirt designs unique to each model, paired with skinny white jeans, so my pieces could sing in their featured role. Mel built dramatic runway makeup that mirrored the colors in the collection, and on the models wearing the UV-reactive pieces, she used UV-reactive makeup too.

Then came the part no one had seen before. For the very last segment, I sent my models down the runway carrying black-light flashlights, and the pieces at their necks, ears, and wrists lit up and glowed in the dark. It was a complete crowd-pleaser. Nobody had seen anything like it.

Seven minutes, months in the making

Here is the thing I most want you to understand about Unfolding, and about all of it. Those two shows were, between them, maybe fourteen minutes of runway. They took months of drawing, cutting, peeling, drilling, riveting, planning, and rehearsing. And no one did it for money.

I have a behind-the-scenes video from those nights that captures it better than I can: a busy backstage full of models and makeup and hair artists, and family and friends, everyone building toward the same seven minutes.

That is what the technical madness was really for. It was a reason to bring my creative fashion family together, a community working on a shared vision, each person contributing their own artistic gift.

The pieces were made for the runway, not the shop. But the runway was never really the point either. The people were.

This is one chapter of a larger story I told in The Creative Family. Every artist who built these nights with me is named on my Creative Credits page.