Snazzy, Shademakers host fashion show, canned food drive for TOPSS

The Snazzy Boutique hosted its third annual fashion show July 19 in partnership with Shademakers Garden Center.

The event doubled as a canned food drive for the Talawanda Oxford Pantry and Social Services (TOPSS), and attendees were encouraged to bring homemade dishes for a potluck dinner and plants for a plant-swap.

Last year, the Snazzy Boutique fashion show was hosted at The Twenty-One, a restaurant and bar formerly located on West College Corner, Indiana, and raised $1,455 for TOPSS.

This year, Snazzy Boutique owner Gini Maddocks said she wanted to have the show in collaboration with Shademakers because the two businesses are located across the street from one another, and she wants South Elm Street to be seen as a “garden district.”

“We want to raise consciousness about what’s going on down here with this beautiful place (Shademakers), … and we would like to be a little bit more mainstream and (let) people (know) what’s down here,” Maddocks said of the two shops.

Several local women – and one male Shademakers employee – modeled for the event, showing off Snazzy styles they picked out for themselves just before. Maddocks emceed the show, focusing on the way the clothes in her shop could make customers feel both confident and comfortable.

“My motto and the way I live is, ‘Dress the way you want to feel,’ because sometimes we’re not feeling our best,” Maddocks said. “So when I have a fashion show, the models come into the shop, and they find things that make them feel a certain way … and that’s part of the whole creative process of this.”

Maddocks said many of her models were returning this year, and her show is an “exercise in creativity” for them – “like playing in the closet.”

She said Shademakers was an ideal location for the event, because being in the garden brings people joy. As the models walked down the runway, hummingbirds and bumblebees buzzed by, creating a natural aura for the show.