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Friday, March 29, 2024

Rip the Runway

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Scholarship funds raised during last year’s Port City Rip the Runway fashion show helped Tyleek Bazil attend North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where he earned a 3.5 GPA. During this year’s Rip the Runway on Jan. 9, local models, designers and musicians entertained more than 800 guests inside University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Kenan Auditorium with the goal of helping three or four more rising college freshmen with tuition costs.

Local radio program director Brandon “Bigg B” Hickman created Port City Rip the Runway with his wife Suprena Hickman in 2012 in memory of his mother, Lillie Ann Heggins. Heggins was a North Carolina teacher for 40 years and she continued educating children through an after-school program when she retired.

Every aspect of Rip the Runway honored her, her son explained, from its quest to help young people continue their education, to the fashions represented, to the vast number of her friends, former classmates, colleagues and family throughout the audience.

“We are all family here,” event host Sandra “The Mid Day Miss” McClammy told the audience before the fashion show started. “[Heggins] had a big passion for this community — for education and uniting the community, and that’s what we’re going to do here tonight.”

The diversity of that community was reflected in the audience, Suprena Hickman said, which included people of all ages and circumstances.

“We have people from all walks of life, all socioeconomic backgrounds, colors. I don’t care what you are, everybody is here and they’re having fun,” she said.

Different generations were also represented onstage. The first clothing brand showcased was King Ron by 14-year-old Wilmington designer CaRon Emerson. Emerson’s models were even younger. As DJ Mike Lang played the first track, tiny children strutted across the stage, showing off Emerson’s clothing line, which his website states draws its edginess from urban skateboard culture.

The next track featured another local brand, PerFit Couture, but larger companies like Charlotte Russe and Lane Bryant were also represented. A special segment midway through the show paid homage to Heggins, with a handful of her former Williston Senior High classmates modeling brands from her favorite clothing store, CATOs.

Brandon Hickman called that part of the show the butterfly section because his mother’s uplifting demeanor earned her the nickname Butterfly. Rip the Runway serves as a high school reunion of sorts for the women of his mother’s generation, Hickman added, and “when you hear them together, cackling and laughing, you definitely think my mom is in the building.”

“If you’ve ever lost your parent, that is the hardest thing to go through,” he told the audience before the segment. “But this right here is my therapy. These women have been my butterflies, they’ve seen me since I was a baby.”

The women wore styles from CATOs because Heggins had an unusual passion for the store.

“My mother-in-law used to CATO hop,” Suprena Hickman said, remembering one time when a shopping trip with Heggins became an excursion to not one, but all the nearby CATOs locations.

Brandon Hickman recalled a time he and his mom were returning from a trip in separate cars. His mother left before him but didn’t arrive home until after midnight.

“I said ‘Mom, where have you been?’ She said, ‘I stopped at every CATOs from Norfolk to Jacksonville.’”

Later in the show, local community leaders also took a turn on the runway. News personality Francis Weller, Martin Luther King Jr. parade organizer Hollis Briggs and Wilmington Police Chief Ralph Evangelous modeled clothing by Cape Fear Formal Wear and Dressing Room. And in addition to the fashions featured, the show also included a choreographed routine by UNCW’s hip-hop dance group Physical Graffiti.

Funds from this year’s event go toward the Lillie Ann Heggins Scholarship Fund. High school seniors from New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender and Columbus counties will be able to apply for the $1,000 scholarships starting March 1.

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