2023 winners Raeven Harris and Rachel Petterson with Her Universe founder Ashley Eckstein
Isabel S. Dieppa
Once a year geek sartorialists convene to experience the top geek fashion show of the year, the Her Universe Fashion Show. The show is a mix of entertainment, glam, couture fashion, and drama.
Ok, maybe not drama in the way we would think of drama. But the show is a competition. For the past nine years designers submit a design, and spend several months bringing their fandom inspired design to life to be presented at the annual show at San Diego Comic Con.
The fashion show chooses two winners who are later given the opportunity to design their own fashion collection with Her Universe.
Although the show may seem like your typical fashion competition, for Ashley Eckstein, actress and founder of Her Universe, the show is about more than a competition. The show is an opportunity for designers to learn and grow.
“The foundation of our show is the same foundation as San Diego Comic Con. It’s all about education” Her Universe founder Ashley Eckstein said. “We want to give these designers a peak behind the curtain in not only fashion but also retail.”
Designers who participate in the show learn the entire process of fashion retail. From the beginning designing a process all the way to understanding the marketing and business piece of fashion.
Over the years the show has steadily gained in popularity and become a highlight of SDCC. The brand has also grown commercially. In April 2018 Hot Topic store acquired the Her Universe brand.
The success of the show and the brand can be attributed to one key ingredient, community.
Without giving exact numbers Vice President of Marketing Andrea Lewis applauded the growth and ongoing success of the brand and Hot Topics excitement to work with the fan focused brand.
“If you look at the history of Her Universe and not only the growth in how the brand has grown and brand awareness has grown, and evolved, I would say that when Her Universe joined our family of friends we saw it as such an opportunity,” Lewis said.
Lewis attributed the success of the brand to the Her Universe fans and the communities built around the love of fandom fashion.
The success of fandom fashion brands like Her Universe also show the power of story and why they bring us together.
“With fandom fashion the characters that we are drawn to is because of their story and some aspect that we relate to them,” said 2023 winner Rachel Petterson. “You go out there and you’re telling a story with your garment but you know the audience they hear that story.”
For Petterson, and Raeven Harris the other winner of the 2023 competition, the power of story and design brought them to the competition where they found a life-long community of friends.
For the designers participating in the Her Universe Fashion Show was the opposite of the stereotypical cattiness seen in fashion competitions like Project Runway.
Instead both designers found new friends for life.
“It was kind of a little bit of a party with all of the designers backstage. It was just incredible,” said Petterson after the show.
“I really do feel like I made really good friends here and it was a really enjoyable experience,” Harris said.
The combination of community and helping one another is at the center of the ethos of Her Universe and the company’s origin story. For some of these designers this was the first time they entered a competition of this level. Likewise for Eckstein, she said had Disney Parks not believed in her and sold her t-shirts when the company first started, Her Universe would not exist.
“Sometimes all you need is somebody believing in you. Somebody is giving you an opportunity so for me it’s so important for these fashion show designers to pay it forward,” Eckstein said.
To say you know somebody believed in me and now I believe in you. And if we all can continue to pay it forward like that than the dreams we wish really can and do come true.”
Photo by: Isabel S. Dieppa