(From left) Amber Kay Pelletier, Taylor Pitera and Ekaterina Stepanova at the 2025 Wear RVA fashion event. (Photo by Michael Hostetler courtesy Wear RVA)
This past May, 44 high school girls from the Richmond region transformed into runway stars, strutting flashy looks at the well-adorned Dover Hall in Manakin-Sabot in front of a sold-out crowd. The night was about more than the outfits, though.
Wear RVA, the nonprofit that hosts “Rocking the Runway for a Cause,” held its sixth event since launching in 2017. Co-founders Amber Kay Pelletier and Taylor Pitera started the organization to help young women discover the power of fashion while raising funds for scholarships and causes both local and national, expanding the event every year by choosing a new charity to champion.
“If you would have told us back [in 2017] what the show would become, I think we both would have told you, ‘You’re crazy,’” Pelletier says. Since their first event, Wear RVA has donated more than $30,000 in scholarships for girls in the runway show and enlisted more than 250 teenagers in their mission to foster confidence in local girls.
Months before the show took place, Pelletier, Pitera and a team of professional models worked with the participants to help them prepare for their event and provide positive support. Through this, Pelletier says, the girls created tight bonds.
“We have some pretty strict policies in place about how they have to treat each other and how we build each other up as a community,” Pelletier says. “Girls that never knew each other before doing Wear RVA have become crazy close friends.”
This year, the event supported the Virginia Treatment Center for Children. Based out of the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU, VTCC provides inpatient and outpatient care and supports academic research on issues impacting youth. The founders chose the center for the 2025 event after learning about how the youth mental health crisis has impacted the girls they work with.
Dr. Ekaterina Stepanova, associate professor and division chief of child and adolescent psychiatry, says the donated proceeds from the show will greatly help VTCC’s academic mission.
“We also want to make sure that we lead the national research efforts into trying to understand other mental health disorders and find more effective treatments,” Stepanova says. “Unfortunately, these efforts really depend on our community and the support that we receive.”
Not long after this spring’s event, Pelletier and Pitera have already begun planning next year’s showcase and hope to add even more models in the future.
“You do not have to be a model. You don’t have to have any experience, you don’t have to have a particular body type,” Pelletier says. “We want you if you want to be there. [We’re], quite frankly, just trying to build their self-confidence.”
