“I love hosting,” said Alex Tieghi-Walker, a gallerist and curator. It was almost 7 p.m. on Tuesday and he was expecting company.
Mr. Tieghi-Walker was five stories above Walker Street in TriBeCa, surveying dozens of empty chairs near the front of his TIWA Select gallery, where about 75 guests — including the model Christy Turlington, the playwright Jeremy O. Harris and fashion designer Batsheva Hay — would soon be sitting.
They were coming in honor of 826NYC, an organization in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, which since 2004 has focused on fostering and encouraging writing among elementary, middle and high school students in New York City. As a way to raise funds, the group put together an evening of readings called “Stories of Style,” at which designers and writers read poems, short stories or essays with a stylish bent that were written by young people who had participated in its programs.
Rebecca Darugar, the group’s executive director, had organized the gathering with the hope that it would introduce 826NYC to a slice of the city that might not have been familiar with it: fashion people.
“As a writing organization, it can feel like only writers think that there’s an entry point into the work that we’re doing,” she said. “But there is a fashion link,” she added, particularly via 826NYC’s work with the High School of Fashion Industries, where the group started a program this school year to help seniors with their college essays.
No student writers were at the event, and many were away at college — evidence, Ms. Darugar said, that 826NYC’s programming was working.
Liza Demby, a creative director and longtime member of the 826NYC board, said the High School of Fashion Industries program cost about $25,000. Ms. Darugar guessed the group was about halfway to covering next year’s program before the “Stories of Style” fund-raiser officially began. Strategically placed QR-coded placards linking to where attendees could donate were tools for making up the rest.
As guests began trickling into the venue, the scent of cod hush puppies and popcorn chicken was thick in the air. Looming over the occasion were threatened cuts to education from the federal government, which Ms. Darugar told attendees would make the work of organizations like 826NYC more important.
Ms. Hay, in a sequined tangerine-colored dress of her own design, was slated to read a piece called “The Revenge of the Dress” written by a trio of fourth-grade girls.
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever read,” she said of the story, which was about a dress that was cursed by a witch and haunts its unsuspecting wearers. “I relate to it one thousand percent,” she laughed.
Jalil Johnson, who has a fashion and shopping Substack newsletter called “Consider Yourself Cultured,” was another reader for the evening.
“Writing is so important, especially in this day and age when there’s so much talk about A.I.,” Mr. Johnson said as he leaned against the gallery’s whitewashed brick wall in a multicolor knit column dress by the designer Christopher John Rogers. “There is a threat of us relying on artificial intelligence to express our emotions.”
In a nearby corner, Ms. Turlington chatted with Laura Ferrara, a stylist and a host of the event.
“I love writing,” Ms. Turlington said, smiling. “I would’ve loved to pursue that in my career. Maybe at some point I still will.”
Recently, she braved the college essay and application process with her daughter, Grace Burns. Her topic of choice?
“She wanted to write about the power of silence,” Ms. Turlington said.
As if on cue, the lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Ms. Darugar made opening remarks before the evening’s emcee, the editor Mickey Boardman, in a L’Wren Scott black sequined cardigan, took to the mic. He introduced his former Paper magazine boss, Kim Hastreiter, who read “Hats” by Stella Kane, an 11th grader at the High School of Fashion Industries.
“If you’re a good talker, you can be a good writer,” Ms. Hastreiter said before her reading. “Kids have to write. They have to document what they’re living through. That will be the history of the future.”
Other readers included Mr. Harris; Leanne Shapton, a painter and the art editor of the New York Review of Books; and Julie Gilhart, a fashion consultant and former Barneys New York buyer. Stories they read had a variety of sartorial topics: A special pair of boots, for instance, and the confidence a young woman found after cleaning the footprints off her outfit.
The evening ended with the author Aminatou Sow reading “Curls and Culture” by Kimora Stanley, a 10th grader. The young author examined her relationship with grooming her hair.
In dove gray Issey Miyake, Ms. Sow made a final push for donations: “We used to have Medicis and patrons,” she said. “Now we have people who make apps.”
“So give your money to something worth it,” she continued to applause.
As guests made their way out into the mild February night, Mr. Boardman, talking about the young fashion writers, said, “There is hope for the future!”
