North Texas is no stranger to high society and high fashion. Some of the biggest houses have opened storefronts here, the area boasts a fashion school with distinguished alumni, and award-winning designers call Dallas home. Denton holds one the most valuable fashion collections. And Dallas has hosted special shows and exhibitions from international fashion icons, like Louis Vuitton, Cartier, and Dior.
However, behind the well-to-do fashion circles of the city, Dallas’ underground fashion scene is also thriving. Talent bursts at the city’s seams. But before local designers can reach national acclaim, they need a platform to elevate them. Enter Emerge.
The homegrown design and music experience, which showcases the work of local artists in a club-like fashion show, held its fourth installment last month at Club Vivo.
Aerial artists dazzled above a packed house of Dallas creatives, who rubbed shoulders and clinked glasses of Hennessy. VIP members of both Dallas’ established and underground fashion scenes had converged for the night to experience a new era of Dallas fashion. The May 21 fashion show featured 12 up-and-coming local designers including House of Armadaus, Chief by Ubong, Ebadore, CréLucent, Annia Louisa, and K Daniels. An audience of over 600 gawked at innovative and daring couture gowns, avant garde statement pieces, resort-ready swimwear, and streetwear collections.
“Some people want to compare us to some of the bigger, more high society events that exist in the city, but we want to be a bridge where that group of people can also come experience more of the fun underground street style of Dallas and just really show that variety in the city,” Emerge founder Sarah Badran says. “We don’t want to lean one way or the other.”
Badran and her sister, Dana Cua Williams, launched Emerge several years ago to give emerging designers a platform to be seen. The bi-annual event is rooted in uplifting minority designers without sacrificing production and quality. They held their first Emerge show in November 2021, at Five AM Theater. Badran and the Emerge team invested in a theatrical production with live music, a light show as models walked the runway, and velvet couches for guests to lounge in during the show.
Since then, the event has grown in popularity by reflecting both Dallas’ underground and mainstream circles. “That’s the night that everyone is together under one roof networking, meeting, and taking their careers to another level,” says Willie Johnson, a staple of the Dallas fashion scene. Fresh visionaries mingle with established fashion minds, breaking barriers in local design. The night is a catapult for innovation, he says.
“The underground is where everyone is very creative. They’re starting, and they have a very young fresh take on everything,” he says. “They haven’t conformed to the fashion hierarchy rules yet, but they are very talented and they’re on their way to becoming.”
Johnson is owner of J3 Productions, a fashion show production and model management company. His footprint in fashion spans 25 years, and he worked as the runway talent director for The PIN Show, a Dallas-based fashion show that highlighted rising and established designers from the southwest. The event ran from 2007 to 2018. It included fashion, music, and installations where both designers, like Isabella Varella, and musical talents, like Dezi 5, took center stage.
Emerge took inspiration from this, Badran says. “The Pin Show was one of those shows that was a staple to me, and I want to see something like that come back. That’s what I’m hoping to build this to.”
For her iteration of the artistic production, Badran, who has worked in local event production for more than a decade, says she embraces Dallas’ urban identity with the production and fashions showcased. “We make up a lot of the culture, and we’re honestly a lot of what makes it so special and unique and exciting,” she says.
Badran leans on Emerge to generate visibility for that culture, opportunity for rising designers, and a support system.
“Emerge will actually open the door for a person that is unknown, that does not really have a big following or a big name, and it actually gives them a platform,” Johnson says. “It’s a great stepping stone for anybody that’s entered into this business, because it puts you in front of a multitude of people.”
In addition to the designers, Emerge is attracting attention as a jumping board for models, too. This May’s event received over 500 modeling submissions. At the show, 80 models of all shapes, sizes, hair textures, and ethnicities strutted down the runway, displaying an inclusive shift in fashion.
Increasingly, curvy models, models of color, and those with disabilities are strutting on fashion runways across the globe as designers and fashion houses try to move toward more inclusivity. (But there’s still a long way to go.) This year’s Design Industries Foundation Fight AIDS (DIFFA) Dallas’ annual gala—Dallas’ biggest fashion event—featured a diverse line up of designers and models. The must-attend event for Dallas socialites was themed “House of DIFFA The List” and “celebrated cultural creative movements and inclusivity of all,” a sentiment Badran reiterates through Emerge’s ethos.
Badran aims to continue to break barriers locally. Through Emerge, she is reframing the fashion scene and dipping into Dallas’ rich pool of untapped talent.
“Minority artists are the underdog, but we’re also really the ones paving the way as far as inspiration, and what’s new, and what’s fresh,” Badran says. “People have always been taking from that. It’s just time for us to reclaim our power in any way, as much as possible.”
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