How Billy Reid Turned a Fashion Show Into a Weekend-Long Festival

Florence, Alabama, is a music town. Take a short drive across the nearby Tennessee River and you’ll find yourself in Muscle Shoals, home of legendary institutions like Fame Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. Aretha Franklin recorded in Muscle Shoals. So did Little Richard, Duane Allman, Wilson Pickett, the Rolling Stones, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. That list isn’t even close to complete—and that was just in the old days. Artists and bands from around America and the world still record in the area constantly. So. Yeah. Music town.

But a fashion town? Not for most of its existence. Not until Billy Reid, who decamped from New York City in the early 2000s, decided to settle into his wife’s hometown. Before long, he launched his namesake brand and set up shop on the main drag of Court Street, in a space that used to be a bookstore. And not too long after that, in 2009, he started throwing a pretty damn good party. He invited folks from all over, but especially American fashion centers like New York and Los Angeles. He called it the Shindig.

“There was no real social media at that time,” Reid explains. “We had tried to establish an American fashion house in the Deep South—and of course I was in New York previously and had that connectivity—but the idea was to bring people here and show them what we’re doing. To take them through the collection, obviously, but also just entertain the hell out of them. Take them to the music studios. Really try to explain the history of the community, the music scene, and how that all connects, as well as showing them a great time.”

The calm before the storm at the Shindig Revival’s welcome dinner.

Folks had fun. So there was another Shindig. And another. Each year, the bands got bigger (Jason Isbell, Alabama Shakes, the Raconteurs, and Kacey Musgraves have all played sets), the food got fancier, the guest list grew (within reason—as Reid notes, “There’s only so many hotel rooms”). Suddenly, Florence wasn’t just a music town. It wasn’t just a fashion town. It was a festival town, too. Then a pandemic rolled around and knocked the whole thing off track.

Show posters from the weekend.

Until this month, that is. During the second weekend of October, Florence was once again buzzing with activity as the Shindig Revival hit town. (“It’s not usually this busy,” noted one attendee who grew up in the area.) On Friday, the Billy Reid store on Court—now with a freshly curated archive section that used to be an inaccessible “hoarder’s paradise,” according to Reid—was brimming with folks shopping the fall 2024 collection, sipping drinks, and devouring shrimp cocktails. A concert in the park, a welcome dinner, and a raucous show by the Kills at the Shoals Community Theatre followed.

The Kills perform on the first night of the Shindig Revival.

On Saturday, between trips to Fame and Muscle Shoals studios, attendees chilled out at a tailgate on the banks of the Tennessee or kicked around town. Then came the main event—at least from a fashion perspective. Up and down the aisles of the Shoals Theatre, models walked in a mix of current and archival pieces for Billy Reid’s twentieth-anniversary fashion show as musician Abraham Alexander played onstage.

Abraham Alexander performs at the twentieth-anniversary fashion show.

It was striking how seamlessly those archival designs integrated with the current collection. But then, according to Reid, that’s by design. “If anything, there’s been a consistency,” he says of his twenty years of designing clothing. “I think that’s kept us relevant. It’s kept us resilient, and it’s helped us build a loyalty. The whole premise was to make pieces that live with you. You’re going to wear them now, but ten or twenty years from now, or ten years ago, they would’ve been relevant. Yeah, it may present itself in a new way here or there, depending on what the vibe is or what’s happening in the world, but there’s that consistency with the piece itself and with what you’re getting.”

A look from the twentieth-anniversary fashion show.

The show was a distillation of the event writ large: music, fashion, folks from around the country, and a whole lot of southern charm all rolled into one. Only fitting, then, that Gillian Welch and David Rawlings took the stage immediately after to keep the vibe going before the assemblage of guests spilled into the alley behind Reid’s store for some late-night celebration and a little more music (this time from Billy himself on guitar; his son, Walton, on vocals; and a full backing band). Even with the crowd packed shoulder to shoulder, the mood was genuinely convivial. A group of strangers turned friends, at least for the Shindig.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings perform on the second night of the Shindig Revival.

“Really what’s made it all these years is the people that have been involved,” Reid says. “A lot of those people did it out of the goodness of their hearts. Came here, and they were just part of our friend group that were chefs and musicians and artists. That spirit is what made it is today, and that’s still what’s happening now.”