By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — High style supporting a good cause is always in fashion.

Westport Library was full of fashionably dressed people Saturday night, on the walkway and in the audience, for “Fashionably Westport,” the Westport Downtown Association’s third annual fashion show for charity.

The show attracted a sold-out crowd of over 300, bids for two large flower arrangements totaling $1,850, and money donated from the sale of drinks and food – certain to raise a goodly amount for Homes with Hope, the Westport-based agency dedicated to ending homelessness in Fairfield County.

But the stars of the show were more than 60 volunteer models who sashayed down the runway set up in the library’s Trefz Forum. They wore fashions from 21 different Westport merchants.

The night was full of laughter and jokes as stand-up comedian and Westport mom Courtney Davis delivered commentary as the models hit the runway.

Jill Dunn, event planner for the Westport Downtown Association, was director of the show, and several of the models were members or staff of the group.

Some of the show’s sponsors set up tables with samples of their merchandise, or supplied food and drink at the event, and six salons donated their time to prepare models’ makeup and hair.

“It’s going phenomenally this year,” Maxxwell Crowley, president of the association, said before the show got underway. “We are excited that we are partners with Homes with Hope.”

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist and journalism teacher for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman newspaper for 10 years and teaches journalism at Southern Connecticut State University.