Kate Betts — a widely recognized name in international fashion circles — will be on the scene for Omaha Fashion Week Spring 2020.
The author and former editor of Women’s Wear Daily, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar arrives Sunday evening for three days of meets and greets with budding fashion designers in Omaha and Lincoln.
“It took two years for our schedules to match up,” Fashion Week Producer Brook Hudson said.
Betts’ appearance is tied to Fashion Week’s mission of nurturing and inspiring emerging talent to pursue their dreams in fashion.
“I’m getting her in front of as many fashion students as I can,” Hudson said of Betts, who made headlines in 1999 when she took the helm of Harper’s Bazaar as the youngest editor ever of a national fashion magazine.
Kate Betts
Betts’ itinerary starts Monday morning at Omaha South High School with an assembly of 200-plus metro-area teens interested in fashion design.
“South High, in our opinion, has the most robust fashion design program in the metro area,” Hudson said.
Instructor Sara Policky’s students will make up about half of the audience. The balance will be students from fashion programs at Omaha Central and Burke High Schools. They’re being bused to South High at Fashion Week’s expense, Hudson said.
Betts is expected to talk about her own Paris dream of building a career in fashion, chronicled in her newly released memoirs, and things she learned about herself and the industry along the way.
Monday afternoon, Betts will be at Metropolitan Community College, talking with fashion design students and instructors.
That evening, she’ll be guest of honor at an invitation-only reception hosted by Omaha Fashion Week at the Empire Room at Midtown Crossing.
Tuesday’s itinerary includes a trip to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to speak with students studying textiles, merchandising, design and journalism. Back in Omaha, Betts will tour the Durham Museum’s fashion collection before opening night of Fashion Week at the Omaha Design Center in north downtown.
Wednesday morning includes a visit the north downtown workroom of the Fashion Institute Midwest for a salon-style fashion show featuring veteran designers of Omaha Fashion Week, which turns 13 this year. By late afternoon, she’ll be on a flight back to her home in New York City.
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While Omaha’s fall show is devoted to seasoned designers, the spring presentation is a showcase for budding talent.
Billed as Metro Community College Student Night at Fashion Week, the opening presentation will feature designs by 135 students in fashion programs at Omaha Central and Burke High Schools; Nebraska FCCLA, Joslyn Art Museum’s Kent Bellows Mentoring Program, Nebraska 4-H and Joslyn’s Fashion Arts Mentor Program at Yates Community Center.
Prior to the runway show, Hudson will moderate a panel discussion with Betts and others about careers in creative industries.
“We’re demonstrating how fashion can impact lives by inspiring and engaging teens,” Hudson said of Fashion Week’s work in cultivating fashion design talent. STEM even comes into play.
Students who may not be applying themselves in a traditional math and science curriculum, for example, suddenly are taking measurements, making patterns, engineering garments and solving problems. Those who walk in shows are learning about poise, discipline and self-confidence.
“Wednesday’s Cancer Survivor Show is about recognizing that we’re all beautiful regardless of what we’re going through,” Hudson said.
Models wear fashions by emerging designers in the Kent Bellows mentoring program at Joslyn Art Museum during an Omaha Fashion Week show at the Omaha Design Center.
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The collections on the runway Thursday and Friday are by students at UNL and designers who have graduated from Fashion Week’s six-month mentoring program and who reinforce the up-and-coming design aspect of Omaha Fashion Week, Hudson said.
Admission to Tuesday’s runway show is free to students with ID. Complimentary blocks of 10 tickets are available to teachers and leaders of youth groups, Hudson said.
As of Thursday, she had received requests from more than 350 organizations.
“We’ll probably end up with 900 students, based on ticket requests,” Hudson said. “That’s a record. It’s remarkable.”
ABOUT KATE BETTS
Kate Betts is a bestselling author and award-winning magazine editor and manager who has held top positions at two of the world’s most successful fashion magazines, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. In 2003, she was named editor-at-large at Time magazine, where she created the first globally published style supplement, Time Style & Design, in addition to writing and managing a popular blog for Time.com and covering the business of fashion for the newsweekly. She has authored the New York Times bestseller “My Paris Dream: An Education in Style, Slang and Seduction in the Great City on the Seine,” and the critically acclaimed book “Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style,” among other titles. In 2014, Betts launched Kate Betts+Co., a New York City-based content company specializing in luxury brand narratives for a broad range of clients in the fashion, beauty and hospitality sectors, including DFS, Ritz-Carlton, David Yurman, Estée Lauder and Chanel.
Made right here: 12 things you may not know came from Nebraska
1 – Kool-Aid
In the 1920s, Hastings native Edwin Perkins was inspired by a juice-flavored drink concentrate called Fruit Smack. In his mother’s kitchen, he played around with formulas to remove the liquid from the drink until only a powder remained — a process that would reduce shipping costs. The result was what became known as Kool-Aid. Perkins moved production to Chicago in 1931, and Kool-Aid was sold to General Foods in 1953. Hastings still celebrates an annual summer festival called Kool-Aid Days on the second weekend in August. The beverage is known as Nebraska’s official soft drink.
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2 – Car rentals
Appropriately located in a former horse stable, the Ford Livery Company at 1314 Howard Street was America’s first car rental company, dreamed up in 1916 by Joe Saunders. He and his brothers expanded their company, later renamed Saunders Drive It Yourself System, to 56 cities by 1926. They sold to Avis in 1955. Read more
3 – Baker’s Candies
These chocolates, a Nebraska staple, are sold throughout the world. They’ve been produced in Greenwood for three generations.
4 – Reuben
The tasty concoction of corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and Russian dressing was invented at Omaha’s Blackstone Hotel by Reuben Kulakofsky. It first appeared on a Blackstone menu in 1925 and is now served internationally.
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5 – Dorothy Lynch
In St. Paul, Nebraska, during the late 1940s, a woman named Dorothy Lynch developed a sweet and tangy dressing. Community members loved it so much that they brought their own bottles and jugs to have them filled with the popular concoction. In 1964, Lynch sold the recipe to Tasty-Toppings so it could be widely manufactured. Every bottle of Dorothy Lynch now comes from a production facility in Duncan.
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6 – Vise-Grip
These days, the pliers are made in China, but the handy tool was made at a plant in Dewitt, Nebraska, until 2008. William Petersen, a blacksmith in DeWitt, came up with the idea for locking pliers in the early 1920s. He patented his first wrench in 1921, but the first Vise-Grip wrench with a locking handle was not patented until 1924. Petersen originally sold the pliers from the trunk of his car, but later formed a company and began manufacturing Vise-Grips in DeWitt in 1938. The company was acquired by Irwin Tools in 1993.
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7 – Chair lift
Union Pacific engineer (not the train kind) James Curran came up with the design for the ski chairlift in 1936. He was inspired by hook-equipped banana conveyor systems that loaded cargo ships in the tropics. The first chairlifts were installed at a ski resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, in 1936 and 1937.
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8 – Cliffsnotes
In 1958, Cliff Hillegass was working at Nebraska Book Co. when he met a Canadian man who published study guides. Hillegass acquired the American rights to the product and produced them under the name CliffsNotes. He continued to develop more, working from Lincoln. The company would go on to produce reference guides for subjects other than literature, saving the academic lives of millions of students time and again.
9 – Richtig
When blacksmith-turned-knifemaker Frank J. Richtig made a name for himself among knife enthusiasts by dramatically demonstrating his knives. Using a hammer, he would pound the blade completely through a ¾-inch-thick steel strap. Then he would slice a piece of paper with the knife that had cut through steel. Richtig’s feat was possible because the steel had been hardened through a process he both discovered and took to his grave in 1977. Richtig’s knives — many of which are in private collections — have been valued at more than $4,000 each.
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10 – Eskimo Pie
Inspiration for the chocolate-coated ice cream bar came from a candy store in Onawa, Iowa, in 1920. But it wasn’t until owner and creator Christian Kent Nelson took his invention to a Nebraska chocolatier named Russell Stover that the Eskimo Pie went into mass production. Many variations of the delicious treat are available in grocery and convenience stores worldwide.
11 – SAFER barrier
The Steel and Foam Energy Reduction (SAFER) Barrier was developed at the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln between 1998 and 2002. Dean Sicking led a team of engineers to create the special safety wall for racetracks, which reduces the danger to drivers in a crash. The system was installed on many IndyCar and NASCAR circuit tracks.
12 – TV dinners
In the 1950s, Swanson met the needs of busy American families with the creation of a meal that was easy and fast to prepare in single portions. Several other frozen dinners had been developed by other companies, but Omaha-based Swanson developed the idea on a nationwide scale. Though it’s widely assumed that the term “TV dinner” came from families eating the frozen meals in front of the television at dinner time, food historians say the name came from the tray’s original shape, which resembled a 1950s TV.
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