Fashion doesn't just start in Milan or Paris anymore.
On a Friday evening in April, The Glasshouse on Manhattan's West End filled with proud parents, faculty, and the particular electric nervousness that precedes a student runway show. LIM College was staging its 81st annual presentation — and for the first time in the school's history, it was doing so under new ownership, with new partners walking the same runway.
In December, the Marcuse family, which had long guided the New York-based fashion business college, transferred ownership to the Japan Educational Foundation. That transition was quiet when it happened. Friday night, it was anything but. Animated shorts from Mode Gakuen, a JEF school in Japan, greeted guests at the entrance. Designs from ESMOD France — another school in the foundation's portfolio — shared the runway with LIM student work for the first time. The show's theme, Global Fashion Fusion, was not just a title. It was an argument.
"Fashion doesn't just start in Milan or Paris anymore," LIM president Ron Marshall said before taking the stage for his opening remarks. "It starts in Seoul. It starts in Tokyo. And it starts here in New York." Marshall had been speaking with reporters ahead of the show, framing the evening explicitly as a statement about what the JEF acquisition means for the college's identity and ambitions going forward.
The show itself unfolded across seven segments, and it opened, improbably, in outer space. The first segment, "Starry Romanticism," sent models down the runway in metallic looks pulled from the archives of LIM mentor Nicole Miller — timed, as it happened, to roughly coincide with the Artemis II spacecraft's re-entry into Earth's orbit. Amazon, the evening's presenting sponsor, contributed to the second segment, "Ballroom Division," before things took a darker turn.
"Apocalyptic Erosion" was the student design segment, and backstage, the creative logic was refreshingly literal. Junior Dylan Lippis described the distressed bomber jacket and shorts he made with two friends as a "streetwear approach" — their character, he explained, was meant to look like he'd survived a zombie attack. Design Club director Miranda Martinez worked from a different kind of scarcity: leftover scraps of chiffon, net, and canvas she'd had no use for until the assignment arrived. She wanted her model to look like someone who had scavenged her outfit from the ruins of the world, because in an apocalypse, you take what you can find.
From that wreckage, the ESMOD France students emerged. Their two segments — "The New Order" and "After the Ashes" — needed no program notes to identify their origins. The first was all Marie Antoinette: macaron pastels, pearl beading, jacquard fabric. The second conjured the severe glamour of 1980s Paris, the kind of silhouette that recalls early Alaïa or Mugler at their most architectural. Danielle Yannotta, LIM's senior vice president and chief growth officer, said the French school's presence "elevates everything to an entirely new level." She noted that ESMOD, founded in 1841 and the oldest fashion design school in the world, brings deep design expertise, while LIM students handled the business infrastructure of the show — production, marketing, music, visual presentation.
The final two segments brought the evening back to earth. Patchwork denim pieces by Veronica Fletcher for Sonny Michael anchored "Heritage and High Fashion," and the closing segment, "The Art of Elegance," featured evening gowns available for purchase on Amazon. Among the models was Jenna Tomasiewicz, a cancer survivor wearing a pink floor-length gown and carrying a flower-shaped bag. Tomasiewicz is affiliated with the Verma Foundation, a nonprofit that provides free caps and wigs to people experiencing chemotherapy-related hair loss — LIM's philanthropic partner for the third year running.
The foundation's founder, Natasha Verma, arrived just as the finale began, slipping in from her anchor desk at Fox5NY. Watching the models move past, she called the collection gorgeous and futuristic. It was a fitting note to end on. The whole evening had been pointing somewhere forward — toward a version of fashion education that is deliberately, structurally international, stitched together across Tokyo, Paris, and New York. Whether that vision holds as LIM settles into its new ownership era is the question worth watching.
Notable Quotes
Fashion doesn't just start in Milan or Paris anymore. It starts in Seoul. It starts in Tokyo. And it starts here in New York.— Ron Marshall, LIM College president
We're taking all of their expertise in design and pairing it up with our LIM students who are more focused on the business of fashion.— Danielle Yannotta, LIM senior vice president and chief growth officer
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
What actually changed about this show compared to the previous eighty?
The ownership changed in December, and this was the first time that shift showed up on a runway. ESMOD France students walked alongside LIM students for the first time, and Mode Gakuen got a spotlight at the entrance. The show became a kind of institutional announcement.
Is ESMOD France a big deal in fashion education circles?
It's the oldest fashion design school in the world — founded in 1841. That's not a minor credential. Pairing that design lineage with a business-focused school like LIM is a deliberate strategy, not just a scheduling decision.
The students handled the business side of the show itself?
All of it — production, marketing, music, visual presentation. The ESMOD students brought the design. LIM students ran the operation. It was a live demonstration of the partnership's logic.
The apocalypse segment sounds like it could have gone badly.
It didn't. One student made a distressed bomber jacket meant to look like a zombie attack. Another built an outfit entirely from fabric scraps she'd been saving, framing it as post-apocalyptic scavenging. There was genuine conceptual thinking behind both.
And then the show ended with cancer survivors on the runway?
One survivor, Jenna Tomasiewicz, walked in the finale wearing pink. She's connected to the Verma Foundation, which gives free wigs and caps to chemotherapy patients. It's been LIM's philanthropic partner three years in a row now.
What does the Japan Educational Foundation actually want from this acquisition?
Marshall's framing suggests a geographic reorientation — Seoul, Tokyo, New York as the new centers of fashion gravity, not just Milan and Paris. Whether that's aspiration or strategy is still being worked out.
Is Amazon an odd fit for a fashion school runway show?
It's a signal. The evening gowns in the finale were available for purchase on Amazon. That's not accidental — it's a statement about where fashion retail is going, and LIM is a business school first.