“I don’t want to be cliché and say I started fashion at a young age, but in reality that’s exactly how it is,” senior fashion merchandising student, Tais Finx said.

From a young age it was her dream to have her collection featured on a runway. Now she hopes this dream might actually become a reality if she gets her collection featured at Omaha Fashion Week.

Omaha Fashion Week is the nation’s fourth largest fashion event and is known as an event that supports local independent designers. It is an annual red carpet event, held in February that showcases the work of designers.

The event is a breeding place for designers, stylists, photographers, artists, and models to get experience by providing mentoring, education opportunities, and a professional platform to showcase their work.

“It’s great exposure to something that is prominent in fashion, in terms of introducing new styles and trends. It’s exposure to other people and professionals, and taking them to something that isn’t WSC. And as far as what it is for Tais, it’s basically exposing her to the process of creating clothing that can be shown to the public.” Said associate professor of fashion merchandising, Mary Elliott.

Finx is a transfer student from Marshalltown’s Community College in Iowa and is originally from the island of Curacao. She’s currently the only student at WSC that is entering herself and her collection to be featured at Omaha Fashion Week. During her first week at Wayne State College she had a talk with her advisor that eventually got her interested in the event.

Elliott oversees the Fashion merchandising program, and takes her classes to the annual event.

“As far as what Tais is doing, because she wanted to submit a collection this year, so the work that she’s doing is being treated like an internship so I’m acting like a supervisor,” Elliott said.

Last spring semester, the students from the fashion program had the chance to attend Omaha Fashion Week.

“It just blew my mind and it was something that I could see myself doing in the future,” Finx said.

To enter Fashion Week designers have to have an interview with the organization.

“I’m kind of nervous since it isn’t a hundred percent sure if I’m in yet, it makes me doubt myself a little and makes me wonder if I’m good enough but I know that if I focus and put my mind on doing something that I’ll accomplish it,” Finx said.

After graduating Wayne State College, she hopes to go into the fashion field.

“I’m not a sure yet, the fashion world is very broad. I really want to become a fashion designer and have my clothes out there at big fashion shows, but looking at it realistically I’ll take two years off to work in fashion itself and hope to show off my designs out the world as a hobby and see how big I can make it,” Finx said.