A beauty and fashion event on Sunday will merge the spectacle of a fashion show with the accessibility of a market.
The 2023 Boston Spring Style Showcase, hosted by Boston Beauty Coalition, will allow people to shop well-known local businesses and discover new ones. The event at Garage B in the Charles River Speedway in Brighton runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and features 30 vendors — ranging from skincare to fashion to jewelry — from Greater Boston.
Vendors will display their lines at tables and on racks, while local models walk a runway for about 15 minutes every hour from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. wearing designs from nine participating brands.
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“There’s something for everybody,” Elizabeth Miner, founder of Boston Beauty Coalition, said.
Some businesses featured in the fashion show include Oblige Boutique, Urban Pigeons, Tomy Allen, and CARLA SHAW Sustainable Fashion. Other businesses participating in the market include Tasteful Skin, Locks of Liz Haircare, and Nailphoria. Vendors didn’t have to be members of Boston Beauty Coalition to apply for the event.
In addition, attendees can fuel up at food trucks like The Chubby Chickpea and enjoy drinks from The Coffee Trike. Young dancers from Imperfectly Perfected Dance Troupe will perform at 10:45 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.
Miner started Boston Beauty Coalition in September 2022 as a membership-based organization that offers networking, business coaching, and events to local beauty and fashion businesses. She held a market in October at a different location, without the runway component. Miner said she looks to make the fashion world more accessible.
Miner, who is also a business coach, was driven to create the coalition after working with clients who said that there was a lack of resources for beauty and fashion businesses in Greater Boston, as well as a sense of disconnectedness. She seeks to fill in those gaps with Boston Beauty Coalition.
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“It’s a community to help people incubate and grow their businesses with other people growing adjacent businesses,” Miner said.
While the businesses themselves may have struggled to connect, Miner said there’s also a need to increase public awareness about Boston’s beauty and fashion scenes. She found the general impression online was that Boston is unfashionably just “jeans and hoodies.” But Miner said that the public has a desire to shop local — as evidenced by the popularity of the SoWa Open Market and similar markets — it’s just about helping people find these businesses.
Rachel Walters, designer and founder of womenswear brand Rachel Walters Collection and a Boston Beauty Coalition member exhibiting on the runway, said events like the showcase help businesses without physical locations reach customers.
“It is challenging for people like me who don’t have a brick-and-mortar store yet to figure out how to get our work to new customers,” Walters said.
Walters said Boston can be a good place to grow a brand versus metropolises like New York City, where she worked for 10 years as a designer, because of the sheer volume of emerging businesses there. Despite this opportunity, people assume Boston doesn’t have the same kind of talent, according to Miner.
“The amount of people that go off to New York to find what we actually have right here? That’s crazy,” Miner said.
2023 Boston Spring Style Showcase, March 26, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Garage B, 1420 Soldiers Field Road, Brighton. Free. bostonbeautycoalition.com/events
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Abigail Lee can be reached at abigail.lee@globe.com.