DREAM BIG: Denim & Degas, The 2nd Annual THE BETTY CREATIVE AWARDS 2016 was a competition, fashion show, exhibit, lecture series and awards ceremony for universities’ rising creative talents. This year’s competition was a creative collaboration of the Cone Brothers’ denim, provided by Cone Denim, and the Cone Sisters’ art. The Cone Brothers were the kings of denim and their cotton mills were the largest producers of denim in the world. The Cone Sisters, while many have not heard of them, had the largest private art collection in the world of their time, which can be found at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Weatherspoon Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

For the competition, fashion design students from both UNC Greensboro & NC A&T State University created fancy denim dresses using Cone Denim. The students’ source of inspiration for their designs was Degas and his ballerina’s, one of the artists the Cone Sisters collected. Their designs were shown at the fashion show along with an exhibit and concluding awards ceremony at the historic Revolution Mill, one of the Cone Brothers’ legendary denim mills established in 1898.