New Orleans Independent Fashion is an initiative
aiming to bring the community together
to celebrate the fashion art of our vibrant and culturally diverse city.
Board
Melissa Clark, Producer
Melissa Clark is a New Orleans–based creative producer, venue operator, and cultural strategist with over 20 years of experience designing immersive events, curating performance spaces, and building communities through art and storytelling.
Her work spans fashion, theater, music, and large-scale cultural programming, with a consistent mission: to create spaces where people connect deeply, share ideas, and support artists.
As Director of New Orleans Independent Fashion and Operator of Happyland Theater, she’s hosted everything from avant-garde jazz to the New Orleans Giant Puppet Festival—giving a platform to both local and international artists.
Peregrine Honig, Artistic Advisor
San Francisco native, Peregrine Honig, has made Kansas City her home and creative epicenter since the age of 17. Honig's work is currently included in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The New York Public Library, The Chicago Art Institute, and The Albright Knox Art Gallery.
Honig’s private and public endeavors have gained her award winning recognition domestically and internationally; she has produced work in art residencies in China, Argentina, attended Art Omi, and began printing with Landfall Press in 1998. Her art and community work as The Senior Artistic Director of The West 18th Street Fashion Show, co founder of Birdies, and curator of Greenwood Social Hall have landed her articles in The New York Times, Art In America, Art Papers, WWD, Vogue, and Elle Magazine.
In 2020, in response to the evolution of “norms” regarding one’s imagined self in relationship to culture and society, Honig wrote a screenplay, “Summer In Hindsight”, which was produced as a feature-length film. To date, the film has won fourteen international awards including The Harlem International Film Festival’s “Best Independent Film” and was exhibited in twenty five festivals in 2021.
Most recently, Honig joined Melissa Clark in March of 2022 in platforming New Orleans Independent Fashion and sustainable garment making through an independent magazine, Parvous, in which artists are linked together through cinema, limited-edition production, performance, and low carbon footprint media.
VanShawn Kayie Branch, Strategic Advisor
Native of New Orleans, studied Fashion Design & Merchandising at Santa Monica College in California, is a multi-disciplinary Artist and practices as a bespoke tailor by trade. In the early 2000’s, VanShawn stepped in retail and began window dressing, curating brand set designs in boutique stores located in his hometown. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, he started a made to measure suiting brand customizing men’s tailored clothing in the local Christian community. Post Katrina, he traveled Internationally as Jazz Artists road manager & personal assistant. After, and for a ten year haul, he began working administratively in the non profit sector of New Orleans where he worked diligently with three companies working his way up to a Chief Operating Officer role and with the last non profit assisting in dissolving. During the non profit tenure, he created a fashion blog and utilized the platform to stay relevant in the fashion community. In 2018, VanShawn reemerged on the fashion scene using his trade skills to redevelop a name for himself. Since, VanShawn has taken his namesake from KAYIE to now VS!