By Mary Pritchard, OMAHA, Neb. – Omaha Fashion Week returns to the Omaha Design Center for its 17th season and the Spring OUTRE 2025 theme is bringing personality to the runway. This season, designers are finding inspiration for their collections through music, pop culture, and personal experiences.
Omaha Fashion Week (OFW), which is the nation’s fourth-largest fashion week, provides local designers, models, photographers and videographers with the chance to showcase their talents.
Haile Christofferson, an emerging designer at this year’s fashion week and the founder of Haile’s House, said that OFW gives local designers a platform while also showing that no matter the city fashion exists everywhere.
“It gives local designers more of a platform, they have like 10,000 people that attend every year so it’s a lot of people that get to see what you’re doing and they’re from all over so it’s important for that reason too because it shows other people that it’s possible to show your work even though we are in Nebraska.” said Christofferson.
Most people don’t look at fashion beyond what they wear every day, but for designers like Christofferson it serves as a way to combine her two strongest interests: fashion and music.
Christofferson says that she found inspiration for her 10-piece line while listening to the album Two Stars & The Dream Police by Mk.Gee.
“The album that it’s inspired by is very moody and dark and romantic and it’s about a hero’s journey so it’s about yearning and having these really raw emotions.” Christofferson said.
The Sydney, Nebraska native has been a part of OFW for the last three seasons. The first two times Christofferson’s designs walked the runway as part of the Student Design showcase. However, this time she is an emerging designer.
While Christofferson may be a seasoned veteran. For her personal assistant, Alexia Cardamone, it’s her first-time getting to be a part of it all.
“I have heard nothing but good things from Haile, from other people, everyone says that Omaha Fashion Week is such a good time,” says Cardamone, “I’ve heard about it, I’ve never been, I’ve always wanted to go here’s my little golden ticket.”
Christofferson was introduced to the world of fashion around 2021 thanks to the recommendation of a friend. She says that she knew she always wanted to create and her biggest piece of advice for beginners is to do what you can.
‘“I would honestly say do what you can because I struggled a lot,” says Christofferson. “There’s a lot of things I don’t like about designing and a lot of things that I struggle with, but I like being able to find my way around that.”
Omaha Fashion Week aims to provide the community with a unique red-carpet experience and create a local thriving fashion ecosystem for everyone involved. In doing so, it helps designers and others establish a successful career in the fashion industry.
Haile Christofferson’s line titled RYLEE & I debuts Thursday night. For more information on Omaha Fashion week including a timeline of the week visit omahafashionweek.com
Two models walk side by side down the runway at Omaha Fashion Week (Photo by Mike Machian)
A close-up picture of one of the designs for Christofferson’s line RYLEE & I (Photo by Haile Christofferson)
