On Sunday, Feb. 9, students hosted the 14th annual Greenhill Charity Fashion Show at the Fashion Industry Gallery in downtown Dallas. Each year the show benefits the Grant Halliburton Foundation, which works to strengthen mental health resources. This year, the show was able to raise over $50,000 for the foundation.   

The fashion show had a zero-dollar budget and was completely student run with two chairs from the junior class and two from the senior class. This year, the senior chairs were Bette Tomecko and Ashley Weinstein and the junior chairs were Sophie Carruthers and Nia Harrison.   

The chairs started planning the event this past summer. The junior chairs were in charge of reaching out to local businesses and creating the raffle packages for the event by January.   

“Nia and I reached out to a bunch of restaurants and local businesses, asking if they wanted to donate gift cards or something for the raffle,” Carruthers said.  

The senior chairs had several obligations to prepare and ensure that the show ran smoothly. Their responsibilities included finding an event space, finding items for the silent and live auction and more.  

“We need to get live auction items, silent auction items and we have to find clothing stores that will be able to donate their clothes for the show,” Tomecko said.  

On the day of the show, there were many responsibilities to make sure that everything went according to plan.  

“We had a lot to do with setting up and we had to run through the show, get pictures of everyone in their outfits and make sure everyone was in the right and clean outfits,” Carruthers said. “It was a lot of work.”  

The show had many different items that were auctioned off and raised more money in the live auction than ever before.  

“We had some amazing auction items like a signed Luka jersey, Carbone dinner [and] a Mavs fan experience,” Tomecko said.   

Tomecko says she enjoyed raising money for the Grant Haliburton Foundation, as they educate people, help bring awareness to mental health and provide resources for those struggling.   

“[The foundation] overall just brings the topic of mental health to the forefront so there is less of a stigma about it,” Tomecko said.