Brigham and Women’s Faulkner-Sagoff Centre drew inspiration from Project Runway for a juried fashion show as this year’s fund-raiser.
Brigham and Women’s Faulkner-Sagoff Breast Imaging and Diagnostic Centre combined fashion and fund raising at Runway, its first fashion show competition, held Thursday night in the InterContinental Hotel Boston’s Rose Kennedy Ballroom. With more than 400 guests, the Faulkner-Sagoff Centre exceeded its $400,000 fund-raising goal for the evening while simultaneously promoting the work of five local designers from the School of Fashion Design.
“We set out to create something completely different from anything we had ever done or seen done here in Boston,” said Anne Vanderheyden, development events associate at Faulkner Hospital, who oversaw production with Rafanelli Events. “We decided to give ourselves plenty of time to recreate our annual fund-raising event, so we spent 18 months carefully and strategically planning. As our honorary chair, Gretchen [Monahan] was fully onboard with the new idea and was able to put together a fantastic panel of judges from the fashion industry.” Runway marks the facility’s 14th fund-raising event. Previous incarnations were typically of the dinner-auction-dancing variety.