Six years ago, Tricia Poythress came up with an idea.
"Instead of doing a book lesson on fashion show promotion, I thought it would be much more exciting to actually implement a show," said Poythress, the fashion marketing teacher at Langley High School.
Poythress had her students produce a full-on fashion show that spring, and it is an event that has become an annual tradition at Langley.
"It is the largest school event outside of some of the major sports activities," said Poythress.
This year's show will take place on Saturday, March 25, at Langley, at 7 p.m. The school is expecting approximately 1,000 people to attend the event.
"The tickets are sold out days before the show," said senior Sondra Ortagus, one of the co-directors of the show.
Senior Alex Burke, co-director of last year's show, concurs.
"It's the hottest thing at Langley," said Burke.
The theme of this year's show is "Subscribe to Style."
"Basically, each scene is like a magazine," said Ortagus. "We have a boat world with a nautical theme, and then Western as our cowboy world magazine, and then our prom scene is 'Seventeen' magazine."
The fashion show involves a range of people, including faculty members and assistant principals.
"We had tryouts on March 1, and we had 173 people from the school show up," said Poythress. "It was a pretty diverse group of kids, we had people from the basic student population, as well as ESL students and autistic students."
Poythress estimates that there are approximately 150 people involved in this year's show.
"The students have planned the entire show from conception, to deciding what theme it would be, to selecting the models, and selecting the stores that we will be featuring," said Poythress. "They write the commentary, they are the commentators, and they are physically making the clothes."
ORGANIZING that many people is no easy task, particularly when you are trying to do so in between classes and homework.
"It's hard trying to get in touch with everyone at one time, and trying to get people to bring their stuff in on time. The fashion show is only a few days away, and some people still don't have their stuff done, so I'm still waiting to see if they pull it together in time," said Meghan McDonough, director of student design for the show.
As director of student design, McDonough is in charge of making sure all of the student designs are appropriate for the show. She also helps the designers to choreograph their scenes.
"I love working with people and I love working with student designers because I love to see what they have come up with," said McDonough. "Their stuff this year is so amazing."
McDonough says the show will feature a lot of dresses and skirts, as well as screen printed t-shirts.
"It's kind of eclectic," she said.
The fashion marketing class has been preparing for the show for months. Ortagus says she has enjoyed promoting the show to the rest of the school.
"It's fun putting the decorations up and getting everybody really hyped," she said. "We had a fashion week to promote the show, and we got to dress up in really fun outfits for the day. The excitement is my favorite part about it."
*To purchase tickets for the Langley High School Fashion Show, please contact Tricia Poythress at 703-287-2716.