Local designers show their work during Boston Fashion Week

(courtesy of June Monteiro)

This dress, part of the Monarch collection from June Monteiro's ENAMOUR line, will be on display at Thursday's Rising Design show in the South End.

By Cara Bayles, Town Correspondent

Collections from recognizable names like Betsy Johnson and Vera Wang have graced the city for Boston Fashion Week. But on Thursday, designers from the local Rising Design collaborative will display the work of five Boston-based designers at the South End's Mobius Gallery.

Rising Design was founded in May by 10 local designers who had attended the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

"We initially started doing a designers' brunch, where we all got together monthly and just discussed if we had met a stylist, or if we had found any contacts that we thought the whole group would benefit from," said June Monteiro, one of the organizers and designers in the local show.

Every designer is showing a maximum of six pieces. Monteiro's Monarch collection is a modern take on Victorian-era mourning clothing, and reflects the passage of time using color, accessories, and trim.

"A widow had to wear black for a year and a day, and after that, she could wear accessories and trim, but the trim still had to be black. After six months, she could go back to her regular clothing, but had to have an emphasis on purple," Monteiro said.

"So my collection starts out black, and then it goes into grays and purples, and then it opens up into purples and creams, so I'm showing a procession of time through color and material," she said.

WBUR's Monica Brady-Myerov will host the 7 p.m. show, and the 9 p.m. show will be introduced by MassArt professor Kathleen McDermott, author of "Style For All: Why Fashion, Invented by Kings, Now Belongs to All of Us.''

The cost to attend the shows, which are open to the public, is $10.