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Models walk the runway at an Atlanta Fashion Week event featuring the work of Safiétou Seck on Oct. 4, 2025.
Credit: kristi York Wooten / GPB
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Atlanta is flexing its fashion muscle in major events this fall
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LISTEN: Shows and exhibitions are opening in Atlanta this month, featuring fashion as fine art from local and global designers. GPB’s Kristi York Wooten takes us directly to the catwalk and behind the scenes.
Major events and museum exhibitions are opening in Atlanta this month, featuring fashion as fine art from local and global designers.
Inside a packed former Forever 21 store at Atlantic Station on Oct. 4, models strutted down the runway to the sound of West African drumbeats. The show marked the pinnacle of Atlanta Fashion Week, where designers like Georgia Tech grad Octavius Terry presented his brand, Groom, alongside the Sarayaa collection from Senegalese entrepreneur Safiétou Seck.
It was one of a flurry of events flexing Atlanta's fashion muscle this fall, including the opening of “Fashion Statements” at Atlanta's High Museum on Oct. 10.
“Being a person who's obsessed with fashion, I saw the power of these exhibitions and the type of community that it can build and how happy people are to come in and have something incredibly democratic and expressive,” philantrhopist Lauren Amos told GPB during a High Museum preview of the show by Viktor & Rolf, which runs through Feb. 8. “So I thought about my legacy and what I wanted to contribute to Atlanta.”
A Columbus, Ga., native, Amos said she grew up idolizing her paternal grandmother’s Southern style and hoped to see fashion thrive in Atlanta the way concerts and sports do. In April, the High Museum announced a multi-million dollar gift from Amos to mount more exhibitions like the breathtaking couture and curiosities from the famed Dutch designers who said "Fashion Statements" represents their own fashion dreams.
“We're from a country where, at the time, there was hardly any fashion,” one-half of the duo, Viktor Horsting, said at the opening. “There was no fashion industry, no fashion media, no fashion culture. So fashion didn't really exist. It was considered as a hobby. Our work, in the beginning, was really like circling around fashion and what fashion could be, and the art world picked it up. So we started presenting in galleries and museums before we started doing catwalk shows.”
"Fashion Statements" features more than 100 works by Viktor & Rolf, including garments worn by musicians and celebrities like Lady Gaga, Madonna, Cardi B and Georgia actress Julia Roberts. Many of the items have pointed titles ("Late Stage Capitalism Waltz") or sewn-in statements ("I'm not shy, I just don't like you").
Curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot said Atlanta will be the only U.S. city to stage the show.
“Here, we have a collaboration with Ahmad Barber and Donté Maurice, who are locals from Atlanta, and they created a series, shooting [photos of] the archives of Viktor & Rolf,” he said. “So I think there is a very strong social message in the work and a sense of humor, a sense of irony … Viktor & Rolf are not following trends, but they're initiating them.”
On Oct.14, Savannah College of Art and Design President Paula Wallace presented musician and fashion icon Pharrell Williams with the college's André Leon Talley Lifetime Achievement Award at Atlanta’s SCADShow venue.
The award is named after Talley, the late North Carolina-born Vogue editor and former SCAD board member, mentor and curator who is the subject of the SCADFASH museum’s latest exhibition, “Style is Forever,” which runs through March 1. The show was created in Savannah and after its Atlanta run, will travel on to the college’s location in Lacoste, France, in 2026.
"Style is Forever" is a delightful and dizzyingly comprehensive view of Talley’s closet, featuring 6-foot-4-inch-tall mannequins wearing suits, capes, coats and bags from the biggest names in fashion: Tom Ford, Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, Miuccia Prada, Gianni Versace, John Galliano for Dior, Ralph Rucci, Vivienne Westwood, Dapper Dan and Valentino. Photographs and personal artifacts showcase the bold editor's meteoric rise from North Carolina schoolboy to magazine covers and late-night Parisian dinners.
Williams, who currently serves as creative director of the French luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton's Menswear division, knew Talley and has a long history of collaborating with Atlanta musicians such as T.I., Future, and Migos.
In a post-award conversation with North Carolina songwriter, producer and SCAD student, The-Dream, Williams said SCAD’s massive tribute to André Leon Talley is a must-see experience and a watershed moment for Black artists and fashion in the South.
“He was the South personified, you know?” Williams told the audience of Talley. “You know, we're from the South, but we don't all walk around with, like, accents and talk slow and adhere to the stereotypes in the North, when it comes to us.
“He was cool: All the things that like André is known for, the idea that this guy's impact was so strong that it led me here today to see that jaw-dropping exhibition," Williams continued. "You guys, listen, this is not New York. This is not Paris. This is not Milan. This is Georgia. And this is one of the greatest exhibitions and presentations that I have ever seen in my entire life.”
SCADFASH executive director Alex Delotch Davis said world-traveler Talley's work with Vogue and at SCAD reflected his inimitable combination of impeccable style and downhome traditions.
"For André, people got to know him and said, 'Well, who are you?' and 'Where did you come from? We've never seen anyone like you before,'" she said. "Then he got an opportunity to explain his root, which is that Southern grace.”
Davis said the South, particlularly Atlanta, has made its pop culture presence known through hip hop music and other art forms, and now it's fashion's turn.
“In Atlanta, we are finding ourselves and finding our voice and sharing it with the world and bringing the world here to come and see and hear and experience what we have to say."
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