Locals embrace personal discovery through visual representation at Kansas City Fashion Week
Photo by Sophia Lail
Kansas City Fashion Week hits the runway this week at Union Station, showcasing beautiful garments. But it’s also a stage where stories, identities, and values unfold. As the world navigates the tumultuous year of 2025, designers and models alike are proving that fashion carries a significance far deeper than trends or aesthetics. It’s about expression, resilience, and connection.
For Lashaunda Cole, founder of Legacy in Motion, the season’s collection is rooted in imagination and self-discovery. “The idea behind my line is myself, the housewife, being asked by one of my rich friends to go to the Caribbean for a week,” she says. “Each look on the runway is what I would have worn if I went—there’s a travel day, shopping day, beach day, club day, even a formal gala.”
Although Cole’s collection is set within flashy island adventure, her creative journey began in a moment of personal grief. After losing her mother in 2017, she turned to jewelry design as a form of healing. That spark led to a flourishing design career.
Brittney Walker modeling for Natalia Mendoza // Photo by: Rowan Bickelhaupt
“I started in 2017 as a jewelry designer under the name Legacy Accessories after my mom passed away. Now, I make clothes under Legacy in Motion, because I’m constantly moving up.” Her story demonstrates fashion’s transformative power—its ability to turn mourning into movement, to transform stillness into progress.
Models, too, find this fashion-centered week in the Paris of the Plains to be an avenue for personal growth and empowerment. For Brittney Walker, who modeled for designer Natalia Mendoza, clothes carry emotional weight. “Fashion is moving art. When you get dressed in the morning, it makes you feel better,” Walker says. “Fashion is a mood stabilizer—When I’m looking busted, I am not in my mind. But when I feel like this, fashion is my armor.”
That armor, she says, is more than the fabric; it’s confidence, expression, and healing. Mendoza’s own collection mirrors that philosophy. Built from upcycled men’s workwear and tires repurposed as a leather alternative, her designs carry generational and cultural resonance. She was inspired by her dad and uncle’s work wear in their blue-collar fields to keep their stories alive and new. “Fashion has to have a story,” Mendoza said. “For me, it’s about giving a fresh life to clothes that have already been through so much.”
This emphasis on sustainability and storytelling underscores how the industry is evolving in 2025. For many, the value of fashion lies not only in what it communicates outwardly but in how it connects us to memory, family, and identity.
Asantie, Tristan Davis (designer of Atlas Swimwear), Kai Kuntz // Photo by: Rowan Bickelhaupt
Atlas Swimwear Founder Tristan Davis echoed that sense of storytelling but with a global lens. After traveling to over 100 countries, he found himself searching for garments that reflected the beauty of the places he visited. His latest collection, It’s Always Summer Somewhere, captures the spirit of travel, warmth, and global connectivity.
Davis’s path to design was unconventional. He studied political science and international relations at NYU but eventually found himself pulled back to his artistic roots. “Art was always my calling,” he says. You can’t escape doing what you love. It’s going to find you.” In an era defined by career pivots and the pursuit of passion, Davis’s words resonate widely.
Models walking for Atlas Swimwear also described fashion as deeply tied to identity and purpose. Former football player Kai Kunz turned to modeling as a new outlet. “I had to medically retire from football ten months ago, and then I got into modeling. It felt like a sign and I’ve loved it ever since.”
For him, fashion offers freedom and creativity after a life defined by athletics. Kunz reflects on its broader cultural value: “Fashion is how people express themselves. I like that Timothy Chalamet quote: ‘Without art, Earth is just a rock.’ We need art to keep our lives freaking awesome.”
That spirit of joy and authenticity extends to the collections of 7Seventeen Founder Darin McFadden. His designs are inspired by self-empowerment and are spiritually-informed.
Brittney Walker modeling for Natalia Mendoza // Photo by: Rowan Bickelhaupt
“One logo is our angel logo, our ‘Be an Angel’ collection. It’s about uplifting people, treating others well, and calling them to a higher responsibility,” he says. “The other is our ‘Do What You Love’ collection. The clouds literally spell it out like a sign from heaven.”
The brand’s name itself carries significant meaning to McFadden, noting that he went out on a whim to release his first music project in July 2018—a moment that affirmed his belief in pursuing passion. “It was liberating to finally go for my passion. That’s what 7Seventeen is about: encouraging others to pursue theirs.”
His turning point to fashion started with making merchandise for his music, and after a while, it became his main pursuit. In his journey, fashion becomes not just an industry but a platform for purpose, an extension of his call for others to step boldly into what fulfills them.
For models like Dorcianna Cortez, who is walking her third season with KC Fashion Week and modeling for 7Seventeen, that purpose is about accessibility and representation. “Fashion means everything,” Cortez says. “It’s how people express themselves, how they identify in their gender, how they feel. It’s an art that everyone should have access to and should be able to express freely.”
As KC Fashion Week unfolds, it’s clear that the runway in 2025 is not just about spectacle or surface-level glamour. The stories being told—of grief transformed into creativity, sustainability breathing new life into old materials, passion rediscovered through unexpected paths—reveal why fashion matters now more than ever. It is armor, it is memory, it is possibility. And at its core, it is a reminder that in 2025, fashion continues to serve as one of humanity’s most powerful forms of expression.
