A crowd packed inside a Sunset Park building Tuesday night to hold a fashion show where the spotlight wasn’t on the designers, but on the recovery of victims of a fire in Red Hook, Brooklyn, last month.
What You Need To Know
Brooklyn Chamber turned the third annual “A Very Brooklyn Fashion Show” into a runway for relief, raising money to help the artist coalition rebuild and reopen following a fire
The fire that tore through the historic warehouse was home to the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, also known as BWAC
Hundreds of artists lost their work when flames and the water used to fight them gutted the gallery
“How can we have this event without using it in a way that is going to help some of our friends, people that we support, and that’s what we do,” Gabrielle Napolitano from the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce said.
The fire that tore through the historic warehouse was home to the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, also known as BWAC.
Hundreds of artists lost their work when flames and the water used to fight them gutted the gallery.
“We’ve been devastated,” Vice President of BWAC Sandy Forrest said.
So the Brooklyn Chamber turned the third annual “A Very Brooklyn Fashion Show” into a runway for relief, raising money to help the artist coalition rebuild and reopen.
One of many groups helping out.
“Red Hook is a big community. We’re a very close-knit community,” BWAC President Alicia Degener said.
A few weeks ago, members were allowed inside the building.
“The place was full of black mold and soot. It’s not a healthy place to be,” Degener said.
Members expect to be able to enter the building in the coming weeks to recover artwork.
“We’re going to start over, and it’s going to be better than it was before,” Forrest said.
BWAC says they’ve been in contact with the building owner, who says they’re more than welcome to come back once the needed repairs are made.