Gallery • 12 Photos

By Desola Omoniyi

Senior Landon Butler receives a scholarship from the Natalie M. Foundation for the extra-curricular activities he has been involved with throughout high school.

The Natalie M. Fashion Show was held at the Doubletree Hotel and Conference Center on Sunday, Jan. 14. 20 National Honors Society members participate in the event, and all of the money raised went back to NHS.  

According to NHS co-sponsor Sarah Sides, not every member can participate in the fundraiser due to a fundraising requirement potential participants must meet.

“It’s a fundraiser, and we get to keep 100 percent of the funds raised,” Sides said. “Students have to collect $100 in donations in order to be a part of the fashion show. When somebody donates five dollars in return they get a ticket to go to the fashion show.”

For participant junior Ally Klaudt, the Natalie M. Fashion Show was something she’d wanted to do ever since she heard about it.

“I signed up because when I was a freshman I saw the Natalie M. Fashion Show on MVTV and I thought it was so cool,” Klaudt said. “It was something that I wanted to do.”

Junior Seth Hobson was one of the five male participants, and for him this added a layer of initial nervousness.

“At first when I walked in I was really nervous because I didn’t see any other guys so I thought I was just going to be the only guy in there,” Hobson said. “After I saw other people that I knew I was pretty [calm].”

According to Sides, the relationship between the school and Natalie M. has been a continued one and benefits NHS and the people they help in multiple ways.

“I would say Mill Valley has been a part of the [Natalie M. Fashion Show] for ten years, or close to it,” Sides said. “[We use the funds for different things.] We always do honor roll gift bags, we have a National Honors Society kick-off picnic in August, so some of the funds go towards that [and] we’ve made blankets before for project awareness so we’ve used some of our funds to purchase materials.”

Klaudt believes overall the participants were excited and supportive of each other.

“I think a lot of people were excited and there was some nervous energy,” Klaudt said. “There were some people that actually did pageants and they came outside of Mill Valley and De Soto, [but] most of us were just regular high school [students] and had never walked on a runway before. I think everyone was really supportive of each other.”

Hobson took the event as a new learning experiences as well as benefiting him with community service hours.

“It was kind of a double positive because I could get community service hours while supporting [NHS],” Hobson said. “I learned that a lot more goes into the fashion industry than just walking down a runway.”