Over the years, Los Angeles has become a memorable last stop on the long trip that is the competition for the ten finalists vying for a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award. On the eve of this year’s Fashion Fund Show at the Chateau Marmont, finalists, along with past finalists, judges, and guests gathered at the home of Cassandra and Brad Grey and enjoyed cocktails and a bit of East Coast meets West Coast synergy. Past Fashion Fund Finalists, like Greg Chait of The Elder Statesman, Juan Carlos Obando, and jewelry designers Jennifer Meyer and Irene Neuwirth, looked at ease in their home-city and happy to be on the other side of the competition. In fact, many of them raved about their memories of being a part of the fund. Chait observed, “the process was so fun for me, and to have Jenna [Lyons] and Mark [Holgate] and everyone back out here—it’s really nice to be on this side of it and honestly, it’s just fun.” He also highlighted one of the reasons why the cocktail party is a good way to introduce current finalists to past ones. “Every year, everybody comes back and we get to show [the current finalists] and judges what we’ve done in the last year.”

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It’s not hard to imagine that the Grey home has probably hosted some epic Hollywood parties, but last night’s gathering was decidedly more of an intimate introduction for the young designers to the L.A. landscape. Of course, with Diane von Furstenberg and husband, Barry Diller, as well as Kim Kardashian West, mingling in the rather small crowd (the reality crew in attendance wasn’t filming KUWTK, but Ovation TV’s The Fashion Fund), the intertwining of fashion and entertainment remained inescapable.

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Some of the most exciting chatter at the party was the news that two past finalists will soon be opening up their first-ever brick-and-mortar stores in the heart of West Hollywood (The Elder Statesman and Irene Neuwirth) and Scott Sternberg’s brand, Band of Outsiders, synonymous with L.A.’s fashion design presence, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year (Sternberg was also a 2007 Fashion Fund Finalist). As the night came to a close, after most of the young finalists had gone back to their hotel to get needed rest for a big day at the Chateau Marmont, Jennifer Meyer said it best: “I’m so excited for them and to see the show come together tomorrow—it’s a thrilling experience. I’m just happy I get to take it all in as an admirer.” True words from someone who knows a thing or two about being a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Finalist.

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You may have noticed a slew of high heels and designer purses around the Sam Fox side of campus this past Saturday. No need to worry—there was no explosion in the design studios. However, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts did host Saint Louis Fashion Week’s Midwest Fashion conference.

During the conference, high-profile industry insiders, local business owners, bloggers and Washington University students all came together to discuss fashion’s impact on the local community and the role that students can play in the future of fashion in St. Louis.

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The event featured big names such as former Council of Fashion Designers of America President Stan Herman, Harper’s Bazaar editor Derek Blasberg and the creator of New York Fashion Week, Fern Mallis. In their panel “Fashion as a Civic Agenda,” these industry experts talked about Saint Louis Fashion Week’s positive impact on the economy and the importance of fostering a unique St. Louis fashion culture.

“You don’t think of St. Louis as a fashion city, so it’s exciting that all these people are coming,” junior Priyanka Reddy, a fashion design major, said.

One major focus of the conference was brainstorming ways to make St. Louis a greater fashion hub. Attendees and panelists exchanged ideas about developing the St. Louis fashion market, especially through Fashion Week.

Wash. U. in particular plays a major role in the development of local fashion culture by hosting events like the conference and involving students with local projects. It currently associates with local businesses like Berrybridge Bridal, Soft Surroundings and ALIVE Magazine. Recently, the Introduction to Fashion Design class designed a series of bras that were put on display at the Jacoby Arts Center in an effort to raise funds for breast cancer research.

The school also exposes students to the fashion world outside of St. Louis in larger cities, so students can look at all their options for the future. From travelling abroad to Florence, Italy, to attending Milan Fashion Week, the school offers a myriad of opportunities. New York in particular is a well-known spot for student internships and career development.

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According to junior Haley Moore, a communication design major, New York businesses “hire Wash. U. people all the time.”

Moore, along with numerous other students, recently returned from the Career Center’s New York Road Show, where they interacted with alumni holding jobs in the industry.

“Students get to network, tour the industry and learn more about the business,” Jennifer Ingram, a lecturer in the Sam Fox School of Design, said. Ingram discussed both the rich history and promising future of fashion design at Wash. U. in her panel, “85 Years of Fashion Design at Washington University.”

New York designer Timo Weiland also remarked that he frequently hires Wash. U. students during the “Fashion as a Civic Agenda” panel.

Although there are plenty of opportunities in New York City, the development of the fashion community in St. Louis may depend on students’ decision to stay in area rather than moving to other cities like New York or Los Angeles.

The conference gave attendees a new perspective on St. Louis as an emerging fashion center and helped them understand the benefits that can come with staying local in the future.

Panelists emphasized that the goal shouldn’t be to compare St. Louis to larger cities like New York, which clearly has a more developed fashion community, but to find the qualities in St. Louis that make it unique. Although there were a number of opinions circulating about the future of fashion in St. Louis, the general perception was that the genuine kindness of its citizens gives the city an identity of its own.

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“The fact that they would take time to come and encourage us to keep going in a place that’s not considered a major fashion center was really inspiring,” Alexis Giger, a sophomore studying fashion design, said. “Fashion interns don’t necessarily need to go to New York or LA…They can do stuff here and make it happen.”

Amanda Marcotte lies face down on a table as a crowd mills about her and Eric Brunelle hovers above her with a sharp instrument that vibrates with an electric buzz.

“It actually sounds worse than it feels,” comments Marcotte as Brunelle works on her back, though she admits the process isn’t painless. “You’re getting a needle in your skin for hours, but it’s not as bad as people would imagine.”

Brunelle is tracing the outline of a picture of the mythical creature Medusa in black ink on Marcotte’s skin, the first step in building a tattoo that will cover all of her back and take multiple sessions spanning as much as 20 hours to complete.

Marcotte sought out Brunelle Saturday at the Providence Tattoo Arts Convention at the Rhode Island Convention Center. The three-day event started Friday and continues Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

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Marcotte, now 23, got her first tattoo on her 18th birthday, when she no longer needed parental permission, which hadn’t been forthcoming. She now has nine, not including the Medusa under construction.

The Woonsocket resident, who went to high school in Lincoln, concedes that tattoos are like potato chips: she can’t stop at just one.

How many will she ultimately get?

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” she says, as Brunelle works on her back. “Maybe I’ll run out of room. I don’t know.”

To Marcotte, tattoos are far more than a fashion statement. They are works of art and a form of a personal journal.

“All your tattoos show experiences you’re going through in life,” she says. “If I regret one down the road, it will remind me of what I was going through. There’s many other things in life to regret more than tattoos.”

Her previous tattoos had cost $50 to $500, but the Medusa will shatter those marks. The first session alone will cost $600, with two or three follow-up sessions that will push the price tag to the neighborhood of $2,000.

“It’s for life. It’s an investment,” she says. “I could buy a $2,000 car and have it for a couple months and have it break down, but this will be there forever.”

What does she get for her investment?

“A beautiful piece of art,” she says. “It’s mine. It’s no one else’s.”

Art is what drew Brunelle to tattooing after working “every odd job you could think of,” he says. He started six years ago at Kaleidoscope Tattoo in Cambridge, Mass. “I wanted to try to find a way to provide for my family while doing my art.”

He dips his electric needle — actually nine needles that bounce up and down when an electromagnet pulls and releases a spring-loaded arm — in black ink, and then traces one of the lines mapped out on Marcotte’s back. The needles transfer the permanent ink mark. “Just jam it into the skin,” he says.

But Marcotte’s skin fights back against the ink, as everyone’s does.

“It’s technically a foreign substance,” Brunelle says, “so the skin is trying to push it out.”

Blood, plasma and small quantities of ink will seep from the skin for an hour after the tattoo is applied. That’s why Brunelle constantly dabs Marcotte’s skin with medicated ointment.

It’s also why many of the people circulating throughout the show are trussed up with plastic wrap. Newly minted tattoos used to be protected by gauze, but tattoo conventions brought the advent of the clear wrap, says Brunelle.

“People wanted to show their tattoos off.”

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As high fashion has evolved from the 1950s to the 2010s, so has the way we consume it.

In the 1950s, runway shows were low-key affairs intended to give audiences a sense of how new designs would look on human beings, or at least how they would look on exceptionally fit and beautiful human beings. Photographs and illustrations in high-end fashion magazines brought the new look to the general public.

Today, runway shows have evolved into spectacles and the general public gets its best look at high fashion by watching the arrival on the red carpet of celebrities at awards shows and important premieres. Photography and the magazines that present the images have gone digital. The elegant fashion illustrations largely vanished in the 1990s.

That’s one of the takeaways from the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens’ new exhibit, “Icons of Style: Fashion Makers, Models and Images.” The show is curated by Laura Whitley, who is curator of textiles and fashion arts for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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The best fashion designers, the ones whose specialty is haute couture — fine fashion designed for elegant or important clients — are also artists whose goal is to “communicate the artfulness of fashion,” Whitley said.

That becomes obvious as soon as a visitor enters the Mason Gallery and encounters the work of Arnold Scaasi, who designed dresses for such celebrated women as Barbra Streisand, Joan Crawford, Lauren Bacall, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Rivers and several first ladies. Dresses he designed for Streisand, Rivers and Barbara Bush are in the Cummer exhibit.

For Whitley, one of the most exciting aspects of that part of the Cummer exhibit is that Scaasi’s notes and working papers are housed in the archives of the MFA Boston and some of them are in the Cummer show.

Different fashion designers have different working methods, Whitley said. Scaasi would start with the fabric, handling it until an idea suggested itself. Other designers start with a sketch or a particular body for which they design clothing. The second section of “Icons of Style” focuses on the relationship between creator and muse.

One classic artist/muse relationship is remembered in a striking black-and-white photo of Audrey Hepburn, who served as muse to Hubert De Givenchy as she was appearing in such ’50s and ’60s movies as “Sabrina” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

A mannequin posed on a red carpet in that section is wearing a daring John Galliano dress that Cate Blanchett wore on a red carpet, establishing herself as a “fashion maverick,” Whitley said. Another of the red carpet mannequins wears a Karl Lagerfeld dress worn on a red carpet by Winona Ryder. There are also red-carpet dresses worn by Kate Capshaw, Kristin Davis and Streisand.

The third section features a runway with mannequins wearing dresses created by such designers as Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, who transformed the runway show into “an event,” Whitley said.

On the walls of the second and third section of the exhibit are iconic photos and illustrations of fashion, including a lithograph that dates to 1913. Whitley said she is particularly drawn to the work of Kenneth Paul Block, who spent almost 40 years doing elegant illustrations for Women’s Wear Daily before being laid off with the entire illustrations staff in 1992. Now, a general unhappiness with “slick digital photography” is reviving fashion illustration, Whitley said.

‘ICONIC IMAGES’

Among the fashion photographers whose work is included in “Icons of Style” are Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Yousuf Karsh, Irving Penn, Herb Ritts, Helmut Newton and Edward Steichen.

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“These artists are responsible for creating some of the most iconic images of the 20th and 21st centuries, reinterpreting and re-creating fashion through bravura line, color and image,” Whitley said.

In conjunction with “Icons of Style,” the Cummer will present “Best Dressed: Clothing and Fashion in the Cummer Museum’s Permanent Collection” in the Jacobsen Gallery.

The exhibit will look at Greco-Roman trends, Elizabethan antecedents, rustic simplicity and the Rococco, the influence of Japonism following the opening of Japan to trade in 1853, and Seminole clothing.

“Icons of Style” continues at the Cummer through Jan. 4. “Best Dressed” will continue through Feb. 8.

Some women love them, others hate them.

One thing’s for sure: Leggings are not going away.

Whether you like to dress them up or throw them on during the weekends, make sure you’re doing it right. Joe Zee, editor-in-chief of Yahoo Style and Old Navy’s Ambassador for fall says, he’s all for women rocking leggings the right way.

“Treat the legging like a basic and put some edge on it,” he says.

“You don’t want to put a sweatshirt with it because you will look like you just stepped out of fitness class, you want to put something more polished or something with a bit more edge with it.”

For fall, layering – with or without leggings – is key, but pay attention to proportions, Zee says.

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“You shouldn’t layer heavy on heavy, contrast with light and heavy textures like leather over cotton, or shine with leather,” Zee said.

“I love a short boxy jacket but over a long tunic shirt and a slim legging underneath – so you have slim, loose, boxy - have fun with proportions.”

Although welcomed at gyms and yoga studios, leggings have come far beyond something to just sweat in. Erica Wark, fashion expert on CTV’s The Social, also teamed up with Reitmans to offers tips on how to push the boundaries with leggings.

She recommends treating the legging like a denim and cuffing or rolling them for a more casual look, paired with a bootie. Or, if you’ve got a pair of pumps you want to show-off, leggings will always match.

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Above look all from Reitmans; Crew Neck Sweater, $40, Petite Plaid Blazer, $65, Original Comfort Leggings,

Here are some other tips on how to style leggings.

Edge

“I love a little bit of edge to it, because I think a legging if done wrong can always look like you just stepped out of yoga class,” says Old Navy’s fall style ambassador Joe Zee. Pair leggings with an oversized knit or denim shirt and motorcycle jacket.

Layers

Stylist Erica Wark says: Don’t be scared to toss a skirt - or even a dress - over your leggings.

Mix

Change up your style with an oversized shirt and ankle boot.