Emily Wright, left, in a skirt of her own design. Becca Roth in jewelry from Fashion Safari, Lodi. All fashion shoot photos by Victor J. Blue / 209Vibe. Catwalk photos from the opening of "Caps and Couture" by Clifford Oto / 209Vibe.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: This story also appears in the November edition of the 209Vibe newspaper. To find out where you can pick up a copy, click here.)

It was almost 10 p.m., and “Gimme More” had faded into another purring dance mix when the first model posed at the end of a runway staged near the Geosciences Center at University of the Pacific’s Stockton campus.

The long parade of garments that followed was part of “Caps and Couture,” a series of events (an exhibition at Pacific’s Reynolds Gallery continues through Nov. 7) curated by undergrads Robin Lee and Madalyn Friedrich that set out to explore the intersection of fashion and “the urban landscape.” It features work created by local designers and contributed by local boutiques.

An outdoor courtyard near the intersection of Pacific and Alpine avenues offered them an intriguingly apt venue for it.

High fashion tumbles down into the Valley: There’s Vera Wang at Kohl’s and Sigerson Morrison at Target. There’s Paris Vogue at the Weberstown Mall.

And more subtly, there’s the alluring local insistence that anyone can create and cultivate a style, that clothing is currency and calling card. Yet even as it permeates, fashion also absorbs and sends back on down the runway a little bit of what’s here and now.

The pieces in the Pacific fashion show – many of which also were featured in the gallery exhibition – veered from willowy dresses with exposed seams and lettuce-edged tiers, to the almost apocalyptic reanimation of fabric scraps, closet cast-offs, even a DayGlo yellow safety vest.

A few days later and a couple of miles south, Maria Reyes stood behind the counter of New Fashion, the downtown Stockton boutique she and her husband, Ignacio, have owned for 10 years.

“Whatever’s sexiest, that’s what’s popular,” said Reyes, who as a child sold Chiclets gum in parks around her neighborhood.

Now she oversees a shop full of bias-cut dresses that look like they spilled from a roll of LifeSavers: sticky-sweet and candy-colored.

“I like the fact that people aren’t afraid to wear color here,” said Emily Wright, a fashion student at San Joaquin Delta College.

But there’s otherwise little sense of adventure and less of romance, she said.

“I think it’s sad that you feel silly in Stockton walking around in a dress,” said Wright, who shops thrift stores for vintage garments.

“I love that people would put on their Sunday best to go fly in a plane, when people knew that important things are expressed in their clothes.”

Valley style is ultimately cautious, said Eddie Richter, also a fashion student. “There are some people who have their own kind of unique styles,” Richter said.

What Shontell Upton sees on Valley streets are a lot reiterated 1980s motifs. (Indeed, the audience at the Pacific fashion show was full of leggings, shoulder-skimming necklines, Adidas sneakers and neon.) “

Do your ‘80s hip hop thing,” Upton said. “But make it your own, you know?”

Leslie Asfour oversees Delta’s fashion program. Every year she takes students on a trip to New York where they can draw inspiration and gain perspective in what still is the hub of this country’s fashion industry.

Valley style remains fairly conservative, Asfour said. Innovation has tended to reach us slowly through department stores like Macy’s or Dillard’s.

But via television, the internet, entertainment magazines, we’re increasingly connected to a bigger fashion world, she said, and that gives her students more opportunities to contribute their own, Valley-tinged perspectives on style.

“What they’re bringing to the table is very interesting,” Asfour said. Consider, if you can bear it, the trucker hat.

“I see that as a distinctly Valley kind of trend,” said Tawny Holt, the designer behind Modesto-based label Armour Sans Anguish.

Indigenous to rural towns, the wide-billed mesh caps, in their original, nonironic incarnation, where the sort of thing farmers got for free from equipment manufacturers or feed companies.

And then, they were ubiquitous.

“It was really interesting to see that move through the indie scene and into pop culture,” Holt said. Her own design bears a quieter, less literal Valley influence.

Holt’s garments are constructed of salvaged material -- a process that evokes something of the growing region’s regenerative ethos, and results in romantic dresses that reflect the landscape’s muted, unassuming beauty.

“I’m really inspired by my friends, or like, riding my bike to the farmers market,” Holt said. “Living in the Valley, around agriculture and things like that, I’m really influenced by nature.”

Sometimes designers who work in coastal California cities say, “’Oh, you live in Modesto, you must come out here for inspiration,’” Holt said.

“And I’m really deeply offended. I am like a huge Modesto and Central Valley proponent and defender.”

She is a co-creator of the upcoming Hand Born Craft Bazaar, a showcase of local apparel, accessories and art held annually in downtown Modesto. The event helps local fashion to develop a better sense of itself and to articulate its point of view to a wider audience, Holt said.

To that end, an Armour sans Anguish dress featured recently in a Paper magazine fashion editorial. The New York-based monthly covers pop culture, art, entertainment and style.

“That was really cool,” Holt said. “Because afterward, Courtney Love bought five of my pieces.”

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