What I Learned About Statement Series

I first met Ana during her presentation at One Million Cups Orlando, where she introduced Statement Series, an event built around the city’s fashion community. After hearing her speak, I wanted to learn more — not only about the event itself, but about what she built. A few days later, we sat down at Noodle Shawty in downtown Orlando, where I finally had the chance to ask the questions I’d been holding back and to understand the vision behind it.

One thing became clear almost immediately: Statement Series isn’t a traditional fashion show. “We are not a fashion show,” Ana told me. “As much as I love fashion shows, and I’ve been to them — we don’t need another one.”

What she built instead is an interactive workshop, structured hour by hour so that guests do something rather than just watch. There’s a photo-shoot hour. There’s a panel hour, where working creatives talk shop. And there’s the style challenge: models take the stage, and guests are handed a rack and a clock. “We have five minutes,” Ana explains. “Go through this rack, put it together, and tell me — what was your thought process?” You style the model, then you stand up and explain your choices. That's active participation right there!

That participatory spirit runs all the way down to how Ana defines the word “fashion” in the first place. “Some people think fashion is always high fashion, designer,” she says. “It’s like — does it look good? How did you put it together? And sometimes it’s not even that it looks good. It just looks wacky. And you’re like… alright, that’s a statement.” High and low, thrifted and designer, polished and strange — it all qualifies, as long as it says something.

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Three years, three statements

Year one was simply Making a Statement — the year of just starting, of figuring out how you want to show up at all. Year two was To the Max, an ode to maximalism that Ana will happily admit she lived a little too literally. “I maxed out my credit cards for that one,” she says, laughing.

This year’s theme is Sustain and Scale — that arc sounds like the honest interior monologue of every independent creator (start, go all in, now figure out how to keep it alive). “How do we still stand,” as Ana puts it, “at this point?” It’s a theme about everything that comes after the leap.

Sponsors as partners, not logos

Rather than treating sponsors as companies whose logos appear on promotional materials, she talks about partnerships — local businesses building real experiences inside the event and, in the process, introducing themselves to an engaged creative audience. For a business looking to support local artists while meeting exactly the right room, Statement Series looks like a genuinely meaningful way to get involved.

Bigger than clothing

Statement Series isn’t really about clothing at all. It’s about creating a place where different creative disciplines intersect. “Somebody’s gotta be building this culture,” Ana said — and that, more or less, is how she sees her own role. She didn’t set out to be a founder. “I really wasn’t looking at myself as a founder,” she told me. “I just wanted to have this event.” Fashion may be the reason people first discover it, but the conversations, collaborations, and relationships that grow from it seem just as important as anything happening on the runway.

“I really wasn’t looking at myself as a founder. I just wanted to have this event.”

I’ll keep following Statement Series as October approaches — the people behind it, the sponsors helping make it possible, and the creative community that continues to shape it. If you want to see what Ana’s building, October 25 is the day to find out.