From Marin To The Runway: Local Woman Chases An Unexpected Dream

LARKSPUR, CA — A 55-year-old Marin mom who has spent more than two decades in advertising is making an run at the fashion world after entering a competition on what she described as a dare to herself.

Sandra Herman entered Next Runway Star in June and recently told neighbors she had advanced to the semifinals. The competition offers a $20,000 prize and the chance to walk in the Rise Fashion Show during New York Fashion Week.

“There's something clarifying about doing a slightly ridiculous thing in your fifties and discovering you're better at it than you assumed,” Herman wrote on Nextdoor.

For Herman, the opportunity carries significance beyond fashion. An immigrant, she said she arrived in the United States 25 years ago with a backpack and $50 she had borrowed.

“There was no version of that year where I could have pictured a runway,” Herman wrote on her voting profile. “Not the career I built here, not the life, and certainly not this.”

Herman said she wants her participation to challenge assumptions about who belongs on a runway.

“Put a woman in her fifties on that runway and you aren't only showing clothes,” she wrote. “You're telling millions of women that the story isn't over.”

Her run in the competition also follows years of health challenges. Herman said she underwent six surgeries in six years while continuing her career and raising her daughter.

If she wins, Herman said the entire $20,000 prize would go toward tuition for her daughter, who is pursuing a master's degree at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

“Twenty-five years later, my daughter is at SIPA,” Herman wrote. “That's the whole immigrant arithmetic in one generation, and I'd like to hand it to her with a little less weight attached.”

Next Runway Star is open to adults of all ages, body types and experience levels. The competition also raises money for Rise, an organization that states it advocates for sexual assault survivors.

Whatever happens, Herman said she's already glad she took the chance.

“And I'm not finished,” she wrote. “At 55 I'm still learning, still challenging myself, still putting myself in rooms that scare me a little.”