What started as a trailer of old clothes has become a mega-watt annual fashion show. VintageNOW combines garments from the past with a keen eye toward the future for an unforgettable evening of glamour benefitting Safe Haven of Southeast Missouri.
The 15th production of VintageNOW, a fundraising fashion show benefiting the Safe House of Southeast Missouri, will be held Oct. 12, 2024, at the Show Me Center in Cape Girardeau.
Deborah Maevers, who owns Pastimes Antiques with her family, says a number of seemingly random things came together to bring this show into existence.
“I do believe everything happens for a reason,” Maevers says.
It all started in 2010, when Maevers purchased a trailer of vintage clothes—sight unseen—from an estate sale in St. Louis. Her initial plan had been to sell the clothing at the antiques store, but then her daughter suggested she have some fun with it.
“She said, ‘Mom, you need to have a big fashion show or something,’” Maevers remembers.
But she wanted the show to be something bigger than a mere catwalk. She wanted to do something impactful, so she picked up the phone book—“We had phone books then,” Maevers says—and looked to see if there was a women’s organization that might benefit from a fundraiser. After speaking with the director of Safe House of Southeast Missouri, then called Safe House for women, she knew she was on the right track.
Within just a few weeks, she had an arrangement with Buckner’s to host the event. The owner said she could use the venue on a Thursday night but, due to fire code, would have to limit the audience to 300 people. Maevers didn’t think this would be a problem.
“I said, ‘Phil, if we get 300 people up there I’ll do backflips,’” Maevers says.
Then Thursday came along, and there were people lined up around the street to get into the venue.
“The owner did a cut-off motion to his neck, so we knew we had over 300 people that night,” Maevers says. “We didn’t make a tremendous amount of money, but we went from the attitude of ‘this will be a one-shot deal’ to ‘let’s do it annually.’ And each year, we decide to have one more.”
The event has grown since then. Maevers has had to move it to bigger and bigger venues before landing at their current spot at the Show Me Center, Cape Girardeau’s largest venue, to accommodate the 2,500 to 3,000 people who buy tickets each year.
The volunteer staff has swelled to 200 people. Among these are six professional fashion stylists, each of whom is assigned 10 models who will appear twice in the show—that’s 120 individual looks.
In the past, show themes centered on a specific decade and motif—think 1940s USO or ’70s disco—but in recent years the show has become more conceptual. This year’s theme is emPOWER: Journey to the Future.
Maevers says stylists took inspiration from a number of films about travel and inspiration. Audiences also will recognize glimmers of Dune, Mad Max, and The Fifth Element.
An electric violinist will set the mood with some futuristic fiddling, and a halftime show will dazzle with a dance-heavy mini-theatrical production.
“It’s become way more than a fashion show,” Maevers says. “It’s an evening of entertainment.”
Entertainment with impact, that is. To date, the show has raised more than a million dollars for Safeway House of Southwest Missouri.
For hundreds more events, visit Missouri Life’s Event Calendar.
