Ludacris performs during the Fashion Meets Music Festival on September 5. Credit: Elizabeth Tzagournis / For The Lantern
Labor Day weekend not only offered the first Buckeye football victory, but also the second annual Fashion Meets Music Festival. The downtown Columbus event, held in the Arena District, spanned two days and entertained attendees with a vast array of musical acts.
The hot weather did not deter guests from the event, which offered an experience combining fashion and music. The four-stage festival also featured a Fashion Tent, which hosted designers such as former “Project Runway” contestant Joshua Christensen, as well as local designers like Betsy Ann Judd and Celeste Malvar-Stewart. Ohio State student organization Heart of it All Fashion also showcased its clothing designs during one of the fashion events.
OSU alumna Catherine Turner introduced attendants to fashion in a novel way. Her business, The Boutique Truck, offers shoppers the ability to purchase her clothing on the go. Turner began her mobile-clothing business almost two years ago after she discovered the West Coast fashion-truck trend in a magazine and wanted to bring it to Ohio.
“I was a Fisher student at Ohio State, so the first thing I did was write a business plan,” Turner said. “This (was) my opportunity to fulfill a dream that I’ve had to own my own business.”
Turner devotes nights and weekends to her passion project. She was approached last year before the first FMMF by some of the women who ran the event and was offered a place at the festival. The Boutique Truck has found success this year and received a positive response from festival attendees.
“It’s been really busy so far this year, which is great,” Turner said.
Fan favorites of the festival included Ludacris, Young the Giant, AWOLNATION and St. Vincent.
Ludacris succeeded at hyping the crowd amid high temperatures and humidity. Throngs of audience members reminisced about some of the rapper’s classics during his Saturday performance on the iHeartRadio Stage.
Later Saturday evening, a band of OSU alums, O.A.R., which stands for Of a Revolution, took to the stage with sax-and-brass-infused alternative rock, much to the excitement of the fans who crowded around the festival’s Stella Artois stage. Pulling from its extensive repertoire — a product of almost 20-years of music making — the band played an energetic set featuring songs like “That Was a Crazy Game of Poker,” “Heaven” and “Two Hands Up.”
The central Ohio-devoted tune, “Road Outside Columbus,” which frontman and lead singer Marc Roberge prefaced with a short anecdote of nostalgia-filled nights spent as an undergrad in OSU’s Morrill Tower, was a smile-inducing nod to the city the band considers a second home.
If Saturday’s lineup served as a pump-up opener, St. Vincent closed the 2015 FMMF Sunday with a bang. Audience members watched the art-rock diva prance around the stage while slamming on her guitar. The night air had grown crisp, with cooler temperatures and less humidity than the rest of the weekend. Fans swayed in the audience or sat out on beach towels, taking in the festival’s final performance.
As summer concludes and Columbus enters the fall season, the FMMF offered an entertaining weekend of events within OSU’s own backyard.
