by MIKE CHAIKEN
CTFashionMag.com
The fashion show on Friday, Oct. 18 in Hartford was dubbed “Phoenix.”
The penultimate night of Fashion Week Connecticut 2024 focused on one of the organization’s pillars, Bertha Angelo, who was making a creative comeback.
Angelo, whose brand La’Moo Designs has been a fixture on the Connecticut fashion scene back to the earliest years of the 2000, experienced a major health setback in 2022 when she had a stroke. The event left her partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. More importantly, the stroke hampered her ability to sew. Thus, one of her primary creative outlets was shut down.
However, Angelo — a New Britain resident– was not completely absent from the fashion scene. She worked with Fashion Week Connecticut, and its immediate predecessor Sound of Fashion Week Connecticut, behind the scenes organizing fashion shows. And she allowed some of her previous work to walk down the catwalk.
But no new garments were seen from Angelo.
Since the stroke two years ago, Angelo gained mobility in her hands and began to create again. In earlier conversations, she said creation was slower than it had been before the stroke. But she drove herself to work and get things done. She also pushed her physical rehab so she could at least walk down the runway without using a wheelchair. And she was able to do that Oct. 18, with the aid of a leg brace.
After the final dress made its way down the runway laid out in the Parkville Art Gallery, there were plenty of tears on the runway as Angelo marked her return as an active force in Connecticut fashion circles.
And there also was news as the well-wishers converged on her post-show. Now that her rehab is well underway, she is taking on the rehab of the Hartford fashion scene. Working under the umbrella of Fashion Week Connecticut, Angelo said she is launching a new Hartford Fashion Week in 2025.
PHOTOS by MIKE CHAIKEN
