And some of the looks will be looking right back at them.
A couple of the rule-breaking artist's dresses are spattered with spooky-chic plastic eyes. It makes perfect sense for a designer with a deliciously skewed view of style.
"Love it or hate it the girl's got vision! Fashion Week is giving her a platform to show her own point of view and we are so enjoying seeing that on the runway," said MFW founder and creative director Richard McGill Hamilton. "When you see a designer with such a distinct point of view hit the runway there will be chatter, but if people aren't talking then you are not the center of attention."
At last year's MFW finale, Hoffman, a graduate of Spanish Fort High School and The Savannah College of Art and Design, presented an alternate fashion reality filled with velvety and outrageously frilly pieces of surreal and crazily proportioned eye candy; not very wearable, but highly watchable.
"It's a little more wearable than my collection was last year. Instead of doing a lot of showpieces I did a lot of separates that you can build with when you put them on," she said. "When you put them on a hanger they look like a salable item, but on the runway I can style them so they're crazy. I'm trying to toe the line of acceptability but still spit in the face of what people think is right. "
The basics behind menswear were the jumping-off point for the collection.
"I drafted everything according to menswear techniques, with a ruler on paper," Hoffman said. "Really, I tried to play on the strict rule that society has put on wearable fashion, and a lot of that has to do with tailoring to the body and clean lines and trying to be simple. I just wanted to kind of throw it in their face, like this is whatI'm gonna do."
Hoffman's MFW show will be a mind-expanding mini style revolution sure to get tongues wagging and jaws dropping.
The runway will rock with sexy, slick and shiny pleather, PVC and vinyl layered with tantalizing textures and dominatrix-like details including metal collars, chains, spikes and buckles. Ultra-modern accessories will include hard, clear acrylic box purses and oversize vinyl envelope clutches.
Hoffman has enlisted both male and female models as her brave style soldiers.
"The guys are wearing kilt-like skirts and other androgynous looks to up the ante a little," Hoffman said. "The looks are just less feminine than the the rest of the collection."
In contrast to the exaggerated, in-your-face fashions, the collection's colors are cool and understated.
"There aren't a lot of warm tones. It's mostly white to a really dark grey. And I have pops of lilac," Hoffman said. "A lot of designers are focusing on blue and indigo this year, but I'm all about lilac."
One of the great things about the collection is people can adjust the attire to fit their own fashion persona.
The collars, chains and other extreme embellishments, are "all for show. If someone's not quite as fashion forward as someone who would like to wear a metal collar, they can take it off," Hoffman said. "I'm taking my ideas and giving you no reason at all not to be able to wear them. "
There is also another dimension to the collection that MFW audiences won't get to experience.
"My collection is actually twice the size of last year's and half of it is going to be in Mobile Fashion Week, and the other half I'm entering for Charleston Fashion Week," Hoffman said. "The Charleston part is more focused on evening wear."
Building her brand
Between the last and current MFW, Hoffman has been channeling her talent and creativity into promoting her own clothes and a cause close to her heart.
"Since last year I've really just been trying to expand my portfolio," she said. "I've done a lot of work with Eye Heart World, because when I met them I was so inspired and I had to get that out."
Eye Heart World is a Mobile Fashion Week charity that raises awareness about human trafficking and raises money for victims through putting on events and selling original apparel, purses and other accessories.
Hoffman was strongly drawn to the cause when she learned about it at last year's MFW, which was the first time Eye Heart World participated.
Right after last year's MFW, Hoffman and Eye Heart World co-founder Season Russo met for coffee and brainstormed collaborations between the non-profit and the daring designer.
A fulfilling partnership was formed, and Hoffman devoted herself to spreading the word about Eye Heart World with her own inimitable style.
"Destani Hoffman is not only one of the most passionate individuals about her work, but I've been blown away by the support and involvement she's put in to Eye Heart World," Russo said. "When we first talked about Eye Heart World, I could see her wheels turning in regards to how she can use her design talent to spread awareness and help others. I'm inspired by her drive to do something great not just for her gain but, for others in need."
Hoffman conceptualized Eye Heart World's spring 2014 fundraising gala at the Centre For The Living Arts. She created an emotionally evocative series of charcoal drawings depicting the struggle of a victim of human trafficking which was displayed at the event.
She also produced a promotional fashion shoot featuring Eye Heart World items.
Hoffman has the resources of Mobile's Six Degrees Marketing behind her. She works there, and her mother owns the agency. Six Degrees has taken Eye Heart World on as a charity client.
"We wanted to feature their products in a more fashionable way, so we did an editorial shoot and I directed it. I was also their stylist," Hoffman said. "They're really into up-cycling so we only bought re-used clothing for the editorial."
During the past year Hoffman also devoted a considerable chunk of time to creating a dramatic and decadent editorial spotlighting her 2013 MFW collection.
The editorial, shot at Fort Gaines by local fashion photographer Kathleen Clipper, is an artfully audacious twist on a red-hot pop culture craze.
"We took my clothes and did this crazy hair and crazy makeup and I told the models, 'Guess what? You're in the 'Hunger Games' and you're in District 13 and I want you to sip tea on the ruins of a society,'" Hoffman said. "We had them crouching in old tunnels, lounging on Victorian furniture on top of broken and cracked rubble and posing against cracked walls."
Hoffman submitted the photos to several magazines, and they were snapped up by an edgy international publication.
"A few of the pages got published in a Berlin-based web and print magazine called Superior Mag," she said. "I feel like I'm all over the place."
The rise of a runway rebel
Ideas like post-apocalyptic fashion shoots come quite naturally to Hoffman.
She's been somewhat of an avant-gardian ever since she sewed her first piece in a Spanish Fort High School home-ec class.
"I did a lot of art stuff in middle school and high school," she said in a previousAL article. "I've always been really into craft fashion design; making fashion out of trash bags and paper cups."
Prior to her memorable 2013 Mobile Fashion Week debut, Hoffman sharpened her skills as a student at New York's Parsons, The New School of Design and Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia.
With a solid fashion foundation and the experience of creating two full original collections and a series of innovative editorials, Hoffman is poised to become a wildly influential force in the fashion world.
And of course, her strategy for world fashion domination includes a turn on Lifetime's popular fashion reality competition, "Project Runway."
"I tried out last year and didn't get in," Hoffman said. "Next time I will have such a crazy big portfolio to give them it's going to be awesome. I will give them no reason to say no."
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