Stony Brook’s Community Service Club turned fashion into a charitable cause by hosting their annual fall fashion show, titled “Creatures of the Night,” on Tuesday, Oct. 26.
The Student Activities Center Ballroom A was transformed into a runway where club members posed as models and took center stage on the coveted catwalk. The hosts for the event were Kaleigh Sartoris, the club’s executive board president, and Katie Gorecki, the vice president.
The event’s proceeds went to The Backpack Program, an effort led by the nonprofit Feeding America. Many children from low-income households rely on school meals as their main source of food and often go hungry during the weekend, so this program aims to fill that gap by providing these children with canned food for the weekend.
The goal of the Community Service Club for the semi-annual fashion show is to raise money and awareness for the Feeding America campaign, as well as other charities that the e-board decides to support each year, Sartoris said.
This year’s Halloween-oriented fashion show was broken up into three segments: movies/TV shows, Broadway musicals, and Halloween costumes. As soon as the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Ghostbusters theme songs blasted through the speakers, the models confidently emerged from the curtains in their costumes.
During the Broadway segment, models charismatically strutted down the runway to the upbeat soundtracks of popular musicals like Hamilton and Newsies. The model’s choreographed moves and poses were meant to mimic the style of their Broadway counterparts.
When participants weren’t walking on the runway, they joined the audience to support their friends or shouted encouraging words from behind the curtain.
“So divine!” shouted a voice from the crowd as the Black Swan, portrayed by Davina Roberts, a junior business management and political science double major, pranced down the catwalk.
Roberts said that many organizations like the Sigma Beta Honor Society came together in order to support the Community Service Club and their initiative.
Aisha Aliya, a senior biochemistry major who choreographed a dance segment for the opening a year ago, participated again this year. Aliya, who whipped her purple hair and mirrored the bad-boy attitude of John Bender from The Breakfast Club, was amazed by the dedication of the Community Service Club.
“They put so much effort and energy into this,” Aliya said.
Another model, Jordan Guevara, described the fashion show as a “cool way to fundraise.” Although Guevara is in his third year as an English major, this was his first semester as a club member. The experience of walking down a runway was frightening for him at first, but he said the relaxed environment was what made it fun.
Correction: Oct. 27, 2016
A previous version of this story erroneously reported the first name of one of the participants of the fashion show. Her name is Davina Roberts, not Devina Roberts.
