Cornell Fashion Collective will host its 42nd annual Spring Runway Show on Saturday in Barton Hall. With over 3,000 projected attendees, the show is expected to be the second largest annual student-run event on campus, after Slope Day, according to Alexis McMurray ’26, a CFC design director.
CFC, a student-run organization that provides members the opportunity to express creativity through clothing design and management, comprises over 180 members who design, model, manage and market for the club.
The Sun spoke with CFC designers and managers to learn how the club coordinates the logistics for this event.
“Made for Moments”
CFC’s designers are split into four levels: level one and level two designers create one or two looks, while level three and level four designers create a senior collection with up to 12 looks.
In addition to being a design director, McMurray is a fashion design student and a level four designer whose collection will be featured in the upcoming show.
Each design level is assigned a theme or chooses one, McMurray explained. This year, level one’s theme is gray scale
“The vision for how the show is going to progress is they'll start with black and they'll end in white, or start in white and end in black,” McMurray said.
Level two themes are more conceptual and are open to interpretation, she added. This year’s level two theme is technology.
This year, the designs “are focused on technology, whether that's fabric technology or even just literal [technology]. I know there's one girl doing literal tech on the garments,” she said.
Levels three and four designers are allowed to pick a theme for their collections. McMurray described the process of creating her own collection from scratch.
“It’s kind of like building a relationship.” McMurray said. “In a really conceptual way, it’s like becoming friends with your own artistic prowess.”
McMurray explained that her process was “nonlinear”. After scrapping her first set of designs in August, McMurray redesigned and began the sewing process, creating mockups of the designs, fitting them to models before ultimately creating the final outfits.
Having worked on her collection since the summer, McMurray said, “It is such a big time commitment. I'm either here [in class or in the studio in MVR] or I'm home, sleeping.”
As a freshman, McMurray said that for fashion design majors, “there’s an unwritten rule that you have to join. It's such great exposure” for careers in design.
McMurray’s collection is titled “Made For Moments.”
“It’s inspired by my personal relationships in my life with my family and people I’m really close with,” McMurray explained. “It’s about your personality and facade … and there’s a lot of sheer fabric.”
McMurray knew she was interested in fashion from a young age.
“My parents would go on date nights, so my mom would leave me at her parents house, and my grandma and I would draw dresses together,” said McMurray. “Every time we'd finish one and I cut it out, I'd put it up on the wall.”
After several years, their designs spanned the wall from top to bottom.
“My mom realized I was serious about [fashion] when I was 10 or 11 … so she got me a sewing machine, and it's still the same sewing machine I use now,” McMurray said.
From New York Fashion Week to CFC
The Sun also spoke with Simran Duggi ’27, a model for CFC who will be showcasing a piece from McMurray’s collection in the upcoming show, to learn about her experience modeling for the organization.
Duggi started modeling during her freshman year of high school, winning a Miss Teen New Jersey International pageant in 2022 after her neighbor convinced her to participate.
Her interest in modeling stuck, and she has since gotten the opportunity to walk in New York Fashion Week twice.
Duggi said modelling during fashion week was different from walking the runway for CFC. She explained that during fashion week, models are cast only a week or two before their shows, so the process is more fast-paced and less tailored to the models themselves.
“For New York Fashion Week, it's more like, ‘can I find a model to fit my clothes,’ whereas, for CFC, it's more of like, ‘can I find a model to fit my vibe, and then I will make clothes to fit that,’” Duggi noted.
Duggi described her final outfit as a loose-fitted crop top and an asymmetrical skort.
“The thing that I'm most looking forward to is seeing all the designs together. I think this year, for me, it's going to be a surprise to see the whole collection,” said Duggi.
As a computer science and electrical and computing engineering student, Duggi has appreciated getting to pursue her passion for fashion through CFC.
She hopes to continue modeling post-graduation, expressing an interest in pursuing commercials, content creation and more opportunities on the runway.
“The idea would be to hopefully end up living in New York City, pursuing a full-time engineering job…and then on the side, modeling and continuing in the content creation space,” Duggi said.
While expressing her appreciation for CFC, Duggi also acknowledged club members that manage logistics. To get a better understanding of the work behind the scenes, The Sun spoke to Harry Bard ’27, CFC’s vice president of management.
Managing All 2,650 Guests
Bard explained the breakdown of the business operations team, describing its four subcommittees: show operations, VIP and alumni outreach, financial logistics and model coordination.
The show operations subcommittee deals with personnel management and purchase requisitions, while VIP and alumni outreach works on newsletters and VIP communications. “They also do the check-ins and the ushering on show day, walking the VIPs to their seats,” Bard explained.
The financial logistics team tracks CFC’s budget and secures sponsorships, and the model coordination team hosts model boot camps, teaching the models how to walk and stage layout, and handles the contracting process for models.
Bard shared that getting to see the 2024 show “was so incredible…but I think what made it even more memorable is the fact that I was completely delirious, having been there all day, minus a 50 minute break — not even an hour to eat and shower.”
While the day-of work entails making sure all the final details come together for Bard, which can leave him “walking around like a chicken with its head cut off,” he said the final product is always worth it.
Bard and his team have been planning the upcoming show since last semester, and a lot of thought goes into details the audience rarely thinks about — including security and traffic control.
“When you have 2,650 guests coming into an event, it's very important to make sure that, not only is there not going to be some sort of crazy line, but also people know where they're going,” said Bard. “[Coming] from a hospitality background, I want to make sure that the guest traffic flow and the guest experience is seamless.”
“Fashion students don't have enough opportunities to showcase the amazing work that they do, and so for the fashion students to be able to use our stage as their outlet to display their work — I'm incredibly grateful that we can provide that for them,” he said.
Inga Wooten-Forman is a member of the Class of 2029 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is a contributor for the News department and can be reached at irw7@cornell.edu.
