By Emma Henzes SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News)- Syracuse Spring Fashion Week 2019 is here. Not only does that means a look at the new trends for this season, but also renewing a sense of added community to the stores downtown.
Midnight Sun, a women’s boutique on South Franklin Street in downtown Syracuse, is one of the participants in this spring’s fashion show. They have been participating for the last five years. The owner, Jim Dauphin, feels the fashion show truly kicks off the season of spring. He starts seeing more activity downtown and in his own shop.
“As the weather warms up, all of a sudden there’s this fashion event.” Dauphin said. “And it all just works together to start to develop some business.”
Midnight Sun employee, Danielle Syrell, adds that people finally “get out of their shells and come out of hibernation.” She feels the spring fashion show is a great way to get customers excited about purchasing new spring and summer clothes, shedding their bulky winter clothes, she told as she tugged her own sweater.
Syrell loves celebrating fashion and style, but even more so she loves that the fashion show adds an extra sense of community to the shops of the downtown.
“You’ve got all these businesses and instead of kinda like trying to rival one another, we are all trying to promote the same thing,” Syrell said. “We want people to bring their money down here so that we can continue to expand and provide the community with things like fashion week.”
This is why Dauphin loves to participant in the fashion show. He said it brings up the quality of the city.
“We want to be part of the community in a good way and to help to benefit the city,” Dauphin said.
Long-time customer Marilyn Ryan feels that Fashion Week helps get people downtown and educate them on what exactly downtown Syracuse has to offer.
“People just don’t know and people are afraid to come downtown and then they realize this is so easy to do and parking is so easy,” Ryan said. “And the clothes and fashion are so different and it’s not like out of the mall.”
She hopes that the city and the fashion show will continue to grow and extend that popular influence beyond just locals.