The student-run Synergy Fashion Group will host its annual spring fashion show at 7 p.m., Saturday, May 6, in Clayton Hall on the University of Delaware’s Newark campus, with doors opening at 6:30 p.m.

Tickets, at $15 for students and $25 for adults, can be purchased at the Trabant University Center box office or on Ticketmaster.

The fashion show includes three categories: Open Submission, Blank Canvas and Senior Collections. Open Submission features pieces that apparel design majors created in their classes, Blank Canvas is open to students of all majors, and Senior Collections feature three or four pieces that senior design students created in their capstone classes.

“This year [the theme] is ‘artist inspired,’ so the designers were able to either take inspiration from a particular piece of art or just an artist in general,” said Nicole Garfunkel, a fashion merchandising major and the president of Synergy Fashion Group.

She said the Blank Canvas category gives students not involved in fashion design the chance to showcase their work.

“I think a lot of people who aren’t in the design major get a little nervous when they are told that their designs will be walking down a runway,” Garfunkel said. “But we do like to give people that option because it is a really great experience, even if you’re not a designer.”

The Senior Collections pieces generally represent a full academic year’s worth of work, she said.

Planning for the show began even before fall semester. Brenda Shaffer, who has served as the faculty adviser for Synergy Fashion Group since 2011, said students began as early as last summer to find judges and an emcee for the event, to plan fundraising and to work with design faculty to figure out a theme for the collections.

“It’s a yearlong process,” said Shaffer, associate chair and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies.

The judges that Synergy brings in are members of the fashion industry, which Garfunkel said offers students an important real-world perspective.

This year’s judges are Nicole Haddad, creator of Lobo Mau; Jack Cassidy, a luxury global branding consultant; Mark DiBenedetto, the operating vice president of client experience and showroom sales at the Robert Allen Group; and Danny Noble, a designer and adjunct professor at Moore College of Art and Design, who teaches collection development.

Garfunkel, who has been involved in planning the Synergy Fashion Show for the past four years, hopes that all of the hard work that has gone into planning the event and designing the collections will show.

“People stay overnight in our design studio sometimes. People put in so much work,” she said. “It definitely takes a lot of time and effort.”

Shaffer called the show “a great reflection of our department and our senior design students.” Because the event is all student-run and student-organized, she said, “I think it’s a testament to their abilities.”

The Synergy Fashion Show will mark the culmination of UD’s second annual Fashion Week of special events.