Photos by Kenneth Chappell
By Linda Tishler Levinson
It was not your granddaughter’s fashion show.
On Sept. 19 the Parkville Senior Center in Hartford held a fashion show, with senior center members as the models.
The show was a collaboration between Damaris De Leon, who works for the North Central Area Agency on Aging, and David Yolen, director of the Parkville Senior Center.
The center had done a fashion show in 2011, and DeLeon, who also is a model, thought it would be a great event to bring back.
“They were already excited about the whole thing,” she said as they began to organize the fashion show.
They also invited other senior centers in Hartford, and the Hispanic Senior Center and the South End Senior Center also participated.
Some seniors provided their own outfits to model. Others were provided by The Clothes Horse, The Hartford Denim and Dewy Neo LLC.
Like a scene from “Project Runway,” local businesspeople helped out, doing hair, makeup and nails for the models, as well as some of the other members.
“We wanted to make sure that they were pampered,” DeLeon said and that many of the seniors told her, “I feel human again.”