The College for Creative Studies sent its 2026 senior fashion class down a 700-foot runway at Somerset Collection on Sunday, April 26. The Show is the program's annual senior thesis presentation, and it ran the lower-level corridor of the Troy mall as a runway with projected lighting and a full audience of family, faculty, retailers, and critics.
The 700-foot length is the differentiator. Most fashion-school senior shows run on a single stage; CCS uses the corridor at Somerset as a working catwalk, with looks moving in both directions and the audience seated along its length. The model holds the audience for the full collection rather than running a single pass.
CCS is on Frederick Douglass Boulevard at the edge of Midtown, the design school that came out of the Society of Arts and Crafts in 1906 and was renamed in 2001. The fashion accessory program, which fashion design sits inside, is the smaller of the school's two design pillars. The bigger is transportation design, which feeds the auto industry directly.
The Show has run at Somerset Collection for several years. The mall's investment is real: lighting, staging, security, and a footprint that closes the corridor for a full afternoon. CCS gets a runway that retailers actually attend. Somerset gets the program's brand association and a foot-traffic event.
The 2026 collections covered the usual territory. Wearable separates and statement pieces. Sustainable fabric experiments. Several collections clearly built around the senior's portfolio submission for industry hires. A few collections clearly built around getting a credit-bearing thesis past faculty.
The students whose work landed in the sold-out portion of the room generally graduate into industry hires within a few months. The students whose work read as portfolio submissions also generally graduate into industry hires within a few months. CCS's placement rate is the program's case for itself, and it does not depend on which collection runs first.
2800 W. Big Beaver Rd., Troy.
