For more than two decades, Amy Kimberly — founder and director of the Carbondale Arts Fashion Show and former executive director of Carbondale Arts — has been a steady presence behind the curtain of the beloved annual fundraiser. 

But for several of the fashion show’s visionaries, 2026 will be a season of transformation. 

The 2025 event marked Kimberly’s final year as director. Laura Stover, who has been a part of the fashion show since 2012 and was the show’s creative director, projection and clothing designer, is also taking a hiatus. Technical director Evan Gaspar is stepping away from the production as well. 

“I follow intuition rather than logic and the signs kept showing me that it was time,” Kimberly said, reflecting on her decision. “It was just coincidental that my dearest collaborator, Laura, was also having those feelings…”

“We didn’t want our last year to be about our last year,” she later added. “We wanted it to be like any other year — sharing the challenges and the joy and excitement. It’s just the way it ended up.” 

Kimberly will now move into a mentorship role, supporting Meagan Shapiro and Emily Fifer, the show’s new co-directors, as they usher the community tradition into a new era. 

“The fashion show has been my creative outlet and I’ve loved it, but it felt like it was time to let other people step up,” Kimberly said. “I’m enjoying being a grandma and being more free with my time. It felt like the time was right even though I’ll miss it like crazy.”

Building a legacy 

The inspiration for the Carbondale show began in Telluride, where Kimberly once served as executive director of the Telluride AIDS Benefit. 

“We raised our money through a fashion show, but it was more than a fashion show. I could see the power of the runway and how versatile it was,” Kimberly said. “Everyone had been using it like a regular runway, but I could see that there was a lot more that could be done with it.”

“What I saw was the power of the actual runway and using the runway not only for fashion, but for dance, and to tell a story, and that it could create many interesting opportunities,” she later added. “It was more about the storytelling and combining the fashion with dance and the story and the cause.”

In 2004, after moving to Carbondale, Kimberly launched her own fashion show. At the time, she was both the development director at KDNK Community Radio and director of the Carbondale Mountain Fair. The first show, titled “The Fashion of Politics,” was held at the Carbondale Community School and benefited both KDNK and Carbondale Arts. It also featured Kimberly’s only fashion line, which she created from voting pamphlets.

After the Carbondale Community and Recreation Center opened in 2008, the current iteration of the Carbondale Arts Fashion Show was born. 

Driven by countless volunteers, the show now sells out three evenings each year and draws over 1,800 audience members. Featuring up to 45 amateur models ages 18 to 80 and dozens of emerging designers and sustainably created collections, the show is a celebration of creativity, diversity and community. 

Proceeds from the event support Carbondale Arts’s arts education programs, youth scholarships, the Rosybelle Mobile Maker Bus and other local programs that foster collaboration and artistic exploration. 

Throughout her tenure as director, Kimberly has shaped the show’s creative vision, ensuring every element — from choreography to lighting, music and meaning — weave together to create a cohesive and unforgettable night of art and community. 

“I don’t create it all, but I help guide whatever people are doing.” she said. “…It’s like a big puzzle piece and I have to figure out how all the different aspects come together.”

Shapiro and Fifer will take the reins as the show’s new co-directors in 2026 and have worked with Kimberly since joining the fashion show team in 2016. 

“I’ve worked with Meagan and Emily for quite a few years and I have complete faith in them,” Kimberly said. “It’s always hard to let go of your baby. It’s like any painter that paints a masterpiece and then they sell it to someone else — it becomes someone else’s and you have to let go.

“That’s always a process,” she added. “I’m not going to say it’s always the easiest process, but I could not think of better hands to leave it in.”

A New Chapter

Both Shapiro and Fifer began their journeys in the show as dancers. Over time, their roles expanded: Shapiro became the director of dance and choreography, while Fifer took on the role of assistant director. 

“There’s certainly a learning curve, but both of us have been involved for seven plus years on the show,” Fifer said. “The other component in why co-directing made sense is…Meagan and I have been working not only on the fashion show, but artistically in the dance world, together for 10 years…so we really have had a collaborative relationship for many years now.

“Part of it was also that we are very excited to step forward and work together as a team on this show,” she added. “It just felt like the right thing to do — we both have been incrementally taking on more responsibilities in the fashion show for the last handful of years.”

Ultimately, it’s the Carbondale Arts Fashion Show community that keeps Fifer and Shapiro returning to the production year after year. 

“Carbondale Arts and Amy Kimberly have created this opportunity, this event, which really brings such a large amount of the community together, but also so many multidisciplinary art aspects into one show,” Fifer said. “There’s fashion and there’s dance and there’s visual art that comes in with the projections and sometimes there’s live music. 

“This community event is starting to have a long history, so to be a part of that feels really special and I feel really lucky to be able to have that opportunity as a dance artist and a performing artist,” she added. 

Shapiro echoed the sentiment, reflecting on the scope of the multi-faceted production that brings the artistic community together every winter. 

“The valley is so excited, everyone backstage is so excited and it really is a gift,” Shapiro said. “To make work that impacts the community, both backstage and in the audience, and to be able to make work on this scale at all is an incredible opportunity.

“As Emily said, Kimberly created this and it is unlike any other format or multidisciplinary arts exhibition extravaganza that I’ve encountered anywhere else in the world,” she added. “It’s really exciting to be able to step into it.”

Looking ahead

Kimberly and Stover will continue to mentor Shapiro and Fifer as they step into their new leadership roles for the 2026 show. 

“Amy is such a visionary,” Shapiro said. “The fact that she created this model that I’ve never seen anywhere else is so remarkable.

“The way that she works is very unique and very special in a lot of ways, but one of them is that she’s so relationship based,” she added. “She’s building relationships and connecting throughout the creative process so that the pieces come together and people feel supported in a very, very unique and special way.”

Although it’s still early in the planning process, one thing is clear: the 2026 fashion show will bring something new. 

“There’s all the ideas, and then there’s what’s possible. We have a million ideas,” Shapiro said. “…We feel interested in shaking it up a little bit. In what way? We’re still choosing that.

“I would definitely like for the audience to walk in and feel like…we’re bringing ourselves in, we’re making it a little bit ours,” she added. “…We’re going to be looking at the arc of the show in a slightly different way because we both come from this movement arts background, and I don’t know what that will yield, but I imagine it will yield something a little different simply because of who we are as artists.” 

The 2026 fashion show, “Step Right Up,” is slated for March 12-14 and promises to be a carnival-inspired extravaganza. Audiences will experience “a metaphor for curated distortions of reality in a world designed to steal our attention,” according to Carbondale Arts. 

Designer applications for the 2026 fashion show are open and due by Dec. 5. Dancer auditions are scheduled for Nov. 16 and model auditions are scheduled for Dec. 7. Visit carbondalearts.com/fashion-show to learn more.