By MIRIAM QUIÑONES & SÍLE MOLONEY

Bronx Fashion Week returned to Co-Op City on Saturday, May 7. The fashion show ran from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at The Mall at Bay Plaza, located at 200 Baychester Avenue, and featured designers and retailers ranging from Callejas Atelier and Larry Franco to Boulevard Menswear, Daysi Fernandez, Macy’s, Forever 21, and Ashley Stewart.

The aim of the annual event, according to its founders, is to provide real-time business opportunities to local, emerging, and established designers, and those from abroad, to showcase their skills and abilities in an industry that, they say, is often non-accessible. The show has become preferred for diverse and inclusive audiences.

About 300 people were in attendance this year for what was billed as a fashion celebration of unity, regardless of age, size, or ethnicity. Flora Montes, entrepreneur and founder of Bronx Fashion Week, explained the history of the now annual event saying, “I fell in love with fashion in 2013 after visiting Latin Fashion Week on a Saturday, and I started planning on a Sunday [for the first Bronx Fashion Week].”

She continued, “After losing everything, I took my last $200 unemployment check and started the…