I liked using Broughton Street for the runway shows, but that made quality photography tricky unless you pushed your way to the front or set up well before each show began. The scheduling got a little off, too, in part because of a hard rain shower just as the evening was getting underway.

So I went with the flow and didn’t spend as much time concentrating on shooting the runway shows as I did the last couple of years.

Of course, there are still runway shots here, but you’ll also see some of the Art Rise interactive drawing booth and of the three excellent bands that performed — I caught Matrimony in the VIP tent, GEMS on the Montgomery stage, and Dent May at the after-party at Ampersand. (GEMS also played a late set at Ampersand and Dent May also played on the Drayton Street stage.)

We will have a much larger post focusing on the bands at hissing lawns in the next couple of days.

More thoughts coming on Tuesday.

The lack of overarching corporate support prevented Gap and Banana Republic from participating in the Broughton Street event, which was certainly regrettable since they are both such large stores.

The SFN crowds on the street definitely seemed smaller than FNO the past two years, but there was some rain and thunder in the area early in the evening that likely hurt attendance. I completely missed hearing Make Westing perform on the Drayton Street stage because I was waiting for the weather to clear before biking down.

And it was the Jewish High Holidays, which certainly cut into the crowd.

But all in all, it seemed like a successful event.

The real key, of course, will be how the Broughton Street retailers and others who had popup shops feel about the night. Did they make some money? Did they cultivate some new customers?

I didn’t really take any photos except at the fashion shows — 2 on the Drayton stage and 2 on the Montgomery stage.

Both stages present some problems in terms of photography, and the first one of the night is especially tricky because there’s still so much light in the sky. I won’t belabor the difficulties since the photos speak to the issues better than I can.

I’ve got considerably more photos than this. So I’ll post these and additional ones to the Savannah Unplugged Facebook page in the coming days. If you want to identify a model or a retailer’s collection, you can do so in the comments here or in the tags/comments later on Facebook.

If you want to share one of these photos, please don’t just pull down and repost the smaller size thumbnail below. I can send you a larger one (billdawers[at]comcast.net), or you can just wait till you can share them easily on Facebook. I’ve had some issues in the last few months with people downloading photos I’ve posted to the blog without permission and then posting them elsewhere without providing links back to this site. Not cool.

Anyway, here are some of the best of the photos that I got of the runway action.

Even if you care little about fashion and never shop in any of Savannah’s boutiques, you’re almost certain to have a good time. Broughton Street will be shut down and pedestrianized between Montgomery and Drayton, plus there will be stages at both ends with DJs, fashion shows, and live music.

The people-watching is going to be great, just like it was the last two years for Fashion’s Night Out, and it’s sort of thrilling just to walk down the middle of Broughton Street on a late summer night.

If you have to drive into town, the City of Savannah is offering $2 Parking in the Bryan Whitaker, Robinson, and State garages. There’s also free parking in the Civic Center lot, just a short walk down Barnard from the action.

For more information and for newsy updates as we near the event, follow Savannah’s Fashion Night on Facebook and on Twitter.

Thanks to Blake at Dollhouse Productions for sending along the detailed lineup for Thursday evening:

Montgomery Stage
6:30: DJ Will Rock
7:30: Fashion Show

• fab’rik
• Trunk 13
• Goodwill
• Copper Penny
• J. Paige
• Go Fish
• Lucy Lu’s

8:00 Flau’ge
8:30 DJ Will Rock
9:30 Finale Fashion Show with Saskatchewan

Drayton Stage
6:30: DJ Boo Doo
7:00: Make Westing
7:30: DJ Boo Doo
8:30: Fashion Show:

• Bleu Belle
• J. Parker
• Red Clover
• Sara Jane Children’s
• Half Moon Outfitters
• Kathi Rich
• Veronica’s Closet

9:00: DJ Boo Doo
10:00: Finale Fashion Show with Cousin Dan

Here’s a taste of Saskatchewan:

And here’s Cousin Dan:

Make Westing is an excellent young indie rock trio based here in Savannah. Flau’ge is a female rapper.

Last year, there were three fashion shows on each stage, which was really a bit much even for spectators. I can only imagine how demanding that schedule was for the production teams, especially since it was a pretty hot night. Two fashion shows on each stage make a lot more sense.

I will update this post if new information becomes available.

Today, the organizers announced the participating retailers for Thursday, Sept. 5th:

24e
BleuBelle Boutique @ The Paris Market
Cardeologie
Copper Penny
Custard Boutique @ ZIA Boutique
Extant Fair
Gaucho
fab’rik
Go Fish Clothing
Goodwill Retail Store
Half Moon Outfitters
J. Parker Ltd.
J Paige Boutique Pop Up Shop
Kathi Rich @ 24 E
Lucy Lu’s Savannah
Marc by Marc Jacobs
Nourish
Paris Market & Brocante
Red Clover @ Chive Sea Bar
Sara Jane Children’s Boutique Pop Up Shop
Satchel.
Savannah Bee Company
Sugar Works Bath & Body
Trunk 13 Boutique Pop Up Shop
Zia Boutique

The ones with an @ in the name indicate businesses that are located off Broughton Street but that are setting up shop in another business for the night.

From the announcement:

We hope an event of this nature will encourage the future participation of other businesses in downtown Savannah and around the creative coast that have not yet become involved.

We urge the public to patronize these SFN APPROVED RETAILERS on September 5th from 6:30 to 11:00pm on Broughton Street between Mongomery and Drayton streets.

Other retailers and other types of businesses might change their hours that night, but retailers had to go through a registration process to be included in the event publicity and in other official ways. Personally, I hope that some of the major chains will choose to be open that night even though they are not officially participating. While those chains could siphon off some business from smaller, locally owned establishments, there will be some dead spots on the street without such participation. It’s a mixed bag. [Update: I neglected to mention that Marc by Marc Jacobs is among the participating retailers. Urban Outfitters, The Gap, Banana Republic, and Kate Spade are not.]

We’ve also gotten word about the bands and DJs that will be performing before and between the fashion shows on the Broughton Street stages:

Stage 1 (not sure which stage is on Broughton at Montgomery and which at Drayton)
DJ Boodoo
Band 1 – Saskatchewan
Band 2 – Make Westing

Stage 2
DJ will rock
Band 1 – Flau’ge
Band 2 – Heyrocco Heyrocco is listed as opening for Savannah’s CUSSES in Philadelphia on this night, so it appears they will not be the second band playing that night on Stage 2 — much to my regret.

Make Westing is the newish project of Lucas Carpenter, the frontman for Deep Search (a band that was particularly popular on the SCAD house party circuit).

Saskatchewan is based in Orlando. Here’s “Occasion”:

I don’t know anything about Flau’ge and can’t find anything online at the moment, but will update this post later.

For the last two years, Savannah celebrated Fashion’s Night Out as part of a worldwide event coordinated by Vogue. But earlier this year Vogue decided to pull the plug on FNO in NYC and throughout the U.S. From what I’ve read, it seems like NYC retailers and organizers had trouble justifying the time and expense.

But FNO was a big deal for Savannah and some other cities — and apparently a huge boost for local retailers at the beginning of the fall season.

Plus, it was tons of fun for attendees.

For my column, I interviewed co-founder Erin Wessling pretty extensively about the switch from FNO to SFN and about fashion-related developments in Savannah generally.

Savannah’s Fashion Night is going to look a lot like last year’s FNO, with stages for bands and runway shows at opposite ends of Broughton and many retailers open into the night with specials and deals.

I’ll have more info about bands, the schedule of runway shows, VIP parties, business partners and sponsors, and other extras as we get closer to the date. There’s obviously more on the SFN website and Facebook page.

I don’t know if there will be a half-pipe in the middle of Broughton like there was last year, but here’s the album of pics I posted after FNO in 2012: