That Great Street

Chicago will turn State Street into Fashion Street today to launch Fall Fashion Week 2004.

Dramatically clad models will ascend a ladder today to position a “Fashion Street” sign on a State Street lamppost. Then, fashion models and performance artists, sporting fashions designed by students at Greater State Street colleges, will transform the entire block of State, from Madison north to Washington, into a high-concept “runway” for a two-hour, sidewalk fashion show. Set to contemporary music, a highly choreographed barrage of student-created fashion will flow among the lunchtime crowd and on four elevated stages.

The ceremonies will note such State Street retail stalwarts as Marshall Field’s, Carson Pirie Scott and Sears and high-fashion newcomers such as H&M, Nordstrom Rack and Forever 21.

A series of free, public events under the umbrella theme, “State Street: Where Fashion Begins,” will include student fashion shows, a first-of-its-kind nightly fashion video projection lighting up five stories of the historic Stevens Building, interactive fashion-related activities, window displays, and a gallery of more than 140 light pole banners displaying sketches of fashion students’ original designs, along the nine block stretch of State Street from Wacker Drive to Congress Parkway.