Brian Aranda is the executive producer of Vanity Entertainment, the host of the Reno Fashion Show. The 2014 show is this Saturday at the Eldorado Convention Center. It will feature Andrew Christian, Bossta Nation, Cicely Margo, Edward Coleman, Feral Fashions, Onward Kitty by Cat Stahl and William Furs as designers and about 110 models. You can buy tickets at renofashionshow.brownpapertickets.com.
So the Reno Fashion Show is this Saturday?
Yes, this Saturday, July 12. We’re super excited. This is our third year. We think this is going to be our biggest one yet. Our pre-sales are out the roof. We limited the amount of pre-sales to about 300, and we’re about 10 tickets short from that. It’s at the Eldorado Convention Center. The doors and the red carpet starts at 8 p.m., but the show starts at 9. The box office, which is right outside the convention center, will have will call tickets available for pick up or for purchase starting at 7.
What’s going to be different this year?
This year we decided to keep it local with talent and designers, as opposed to last year where we used some corporate stores, like Banana Republic. This year we’ve even gotten some screen tee designers, which we seem to have a lot of in town. A lot of local talent including Grant Davis and Jakki Ford. They’ll be performing separate songs. Last year we had Janice Dickinson, so the change is that we’re making it a lot more local.
What kind of clothes will there be?
We’re going everywhere from men’s underwear to women’s gowns and dresses, furs. We have basically all seasons, all genres of style.
What are you most excited for?
I’m really excited for the diversity of fashions that are being shown this year. We have your affordable elegance—William Furs—but we also have urban wear and urban attire, which really targets a younger demographic with Boston Nation—urban apparel, they call it. So I really like the variety we have this year, and I’m really excited for our opening number with Grant Davis. They’ve been preparing a lot of dance choreography, and he’s a great singer.
How is Reno’s fashion scene?
I think Reno is pretty up to date. We definitely have a slight style of our own. You can tell who lives here versus who’s from somewhere else. Reno has a modern mix of the current trends, a little ’60s flair and quite a big dash of country style.
And how has the local fashion scene changed recently?
Well, just in the few years that we’ve been doing the fashion show, we’ve seen a lot more aspiring models come forward and designers with a new platform to showcase themselves and expose themselves and try to get their name out there. I’ve had people go from attending the show the first year to now actually showing something this year. So I think we’ve created this platform that’s allowed them to expand their horizons and given them an opportunity to follow their dream, even though you may think it’s just Reno. There’s definitely talent—a lot of it—out there. A lot of the models that we use in our show have been—some are professionals, some it’s their first time in a runway show, some have been used in media and ads nationwide and other ones are, like I said, just new to the whole scene. But I think it’s expanding.