As the sole undergraduate college whose students and alumni unveiled designs on New York Fashion Week runways in 2021 and 2022, Albright College returns to showcase six more student and alumni fashion collections for a capacity crowd on Saturday, Sept. 9 at 7 p.m., on this year’s 3 West Club runway, at 3 W. 51st Street, New York.
Albright New York Fashion Week (NYFW) designers include Victoria Aquino ’23, Brooklyn, N.Y., Susan Benitez ’15, Philadelphia, Pa., Jasmin Burton ’17, Philadelphia, Pa., Alfredo Diaz Jr. ’16, Reading, Pa., Nicholas Kedge ’23, Centreville, Va., and Zyaire Valentine ’23, Philadelphia, Pa.
Produced by Albright alumnus R. Scott French ’87 of VERY New York, and boasting a crew of Albright students, the show featured fashion designs by Albright alumni and current Albright students. Follow along on social media via #albrightNYFW.
Victoria Aquino, Albright class of 2023, a native of Queens, New York, has spent most of her life traveling between New Jersey, Paraguay and Los Angeles. Victoria initially studied international relations and Mandarin Chinese while studying abroad in Taiwan. However, transferring to Albright College gave her the opportunity to change her career path to fashion design and merchandising. She took interest in fashion by looking at Harajuku Street fashion, couture runway shows and experimental fashion. She hopes to learn more about fashion through experimentation and injecting strong elements of storytelling into her collections.
Susan Benitez graduated from Albright College in 2015 with a degree in costume design. Benitez has since been active in the Philadelphia theater scene where she has made countless costumes for opera, ballet and TV. She has gained a great deal of attention by creating costumes for puppets, which can be seen on Netflix and Apple TV. Benitez currently works as the wardrobe manager for Live Casino and Hotel in Philadelphia where she uses her design skills to create uniforms, specialty costumes and decorative displays for special events. At its core, her brand is whimsical, colorful and feminine while paying homage to some of the great fashion moments of the past. For her spring 2024 collection, she touches upon classic lines from the 1950s to bold floral jacquards and brocades.
A Philadelphia native, Jasmin Burton, Albright class of 2017, has always had a love for art and fashion. Throughout her studies at both the Charter High School for Architecture and Design and Albright College, she developed a love for patternmaking and illustration classes. She introduced her brand, Jasmin Nasha through two fashion show productions. Her inspiration for her 2024 resort wear collection includes a photograph of her late grandmother and 1970s Stephen Burrows design.
Graduating in 2016 with an Albright College bachelor’s degree in fashion design, Alfredo Diaz Jr has gained fashion industry experience working for companies such as Anna Sui and Dzines Tex — where he has applied the skills he learned to his collection. Diaz’s inspiration is derived from his heritage in the Dominican Republic as well as New York City. He aims to combine Dominican festival wear with a more contemporary ready-to-wear twist by using vibrant colors, printed tropical patterns and flared and ruffled silhouettes.
Born in Bogota, Colombia and raised primarily in Centreville, Va., Nicholas Kedge is a class of 2023 Albright fashion design graduate who made his New York Fashion Week debut in the college’s 2022 showcase. Having sought a career in the arts since childhood, Kedge offers designs that are informed by many of his early interests including film, makeup and costume design. Whether inspired by a dystopian landscape or the intricacies of human anatomy, storytelling and worldbuilding are the focus of his collections — and he strives to make sure that each garment feels imbued with a myriad of tones and an abundance of unspoken history. He focuses on mixing the skills of traditional patternmaking with hand-draped elements that have a more fluid, improvisational quality.
A senior fashion design student at Albright College, Zyaire Valentine was born in Philadelphia, Pa. After taking classes at Kipp Dubois Collegiate Academy, he began to pursue his interest in fashion illustration and design. With mentoring from his Albright professors, he began learning costume construction, surface embellishments and taking other classes to appease his aesthetics, which tend toward the editorial and haute couture. While at Albright, Valentine has submitted several garments to be shown in various student-produced shows hosted by Club Vogue — the college’s fashion club on which he has served as a member of the executive board. In 2022, Valentine made noise during the Fashion Department’s year-end fashion show, winning the award for Best Individual Design. Valentine’s award-winning designs were also featured in the college’s Fashion Lion magazine.
