LGBTQ+ Nonprofits Walk a Dazzling Couture Runway at Threads of Pride

San Francisco Pride unveiled its most innovative celebration yet on June 24 with “Threads of Pride,” a debut fashion showcase at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts that brilliantly fused haute couture with social advocacy. Under the powerful theme “Queer Joy is Resistance,” the evening featured LGBTQ+ nonprofit leaders strutting down the runway in designs that visually represented queer communities while affirming that celebration itself is a form of protest and visibility.

The star-studded lineup that day included designers Jad Racha’s vibrant couture-inspired silhouettes, Vasily Vein’s gender-norm-challenging androgynous tailoring, Emma Claire Latham’s colorful layered textures, Kenlynn Wilson’s futurist elegance and John Varvatos’s signature rock-and-roll menswear. 1970s supermodel Pat Cleveland’s triumphant return to the runway provided the evening’s most memorable highlight, while activist Nas Mohamed’s creative vision for the event seamlessly integrated fashion, music, dance and advocacy. The multi-sensory experience, accompanied by Antonio Contreras’s artistic direction and Ryan Davis’s choreography, demonstrated the resilience and joyful spirit of queer culture in 2025, creating compelling testimony to fashion’s power as a vehicle for social change.