Carole McClellan is the winner of the Fashion Funds prize at an Independent Designer Runway Show at Fashion Week 2012 at The Bellevue Collection. The Fashion Fund prize includes $5000 to help her build the business.

The Independent Designer Show at the Bellevue Collection showcased inspiring and unique designs of eight local fashion designers through a runway event.

Fashion Week in Bellevue was started seven years ago and this event is a golden opportunity to all the budding designers to showcase their creations to a large number of audiences and get noticed. It helps the emerging designers to create a network and support system for the future.

“Fashion is our largest category of retail at the Bellevue Collection,” VP of Marketing for The Bellevue Collection and Kemper Development Company, Jennifer Leavitt noted. “Creating this fabulous opportunity for local designers to compete and show their point of view was a natural next step. We have an opportunity to assist the growth of the fashion offering in the market and to extend our helping hand to an industry that is so important to our company and community,” she added.

Carole McClellan has many years of experience in fabrics like leather and fur but for this event she came out of her comfort zone and worked with fabrics like denim among others. “I’ve always worked in fur and leather with recycled and repurposed pieces that I completely take apart and put back together into a contemporary configuration,” said McClellan while introducing her collection that caters to both men and women.

McClellan's designs are very fashion forward and neat. As her designs are mostly in fur and leather they are very luxurious and rich and carry an air of old, formal charm in them.

The event also featured Seattle-area NBC’s Season One Fashion Star contestants Lisa Vian Hunter of Vian Hunter House of Fashion and Lizzie Parker. Parker opened the show with her unique style of working on jersey and other soft fabrics and the show was concluded by Hunter and her spring 2013 collection which featured bright hues of pink and orange dresses, suiting and blouses along with her signature “little black dress”.

The eight designers that presented their creations during the show were selected out of 19 presentations.

The eight designers were: Carole McClellan by Carole McClellan, Anne Sylvain by Patricia Raskin, Built For Man by Francisco Hernandez, KateS Mensah by Kathy Sabin-Mensah, Olga Szwed by Olga Szwed, Bd Homme by Banchong Douangphrachanh, Masha Osoianu Design by Masha Osoianu and Ampersand As Apostrophe by Jessica Park.