Bill Powers, Cynthia Rowley, and SAIC fashion chair Nick Cave

This week the School of the Art Institute released more details about Fashion 2012, its annual year-end student fashion show, and The Walk, the accompanying benefit gala, on April 19. This year the school honors Chicago-born fashion designer and SAIC alumna Cynthia Rowley and her husband Bill Powers, co-owner of New York’s Half Gallery and a host of the Bravo TV show Work of Art, with the annual Legend of Fashion award. The whole thing has a pronounced Manhattan flavor, what with Mickey Boardman, the mischevious editorial director of Paper magazine, handling emcee duties and New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz presenting the award. I don’t know if I should take this as a sign of the city’s inferiority complex when it comes to fashion or newfound acceptance of New York’s greater standing in the field.

If you want to bone up on the couple and their achievements before the big event, they and their frenetic yet somehow grounded lifestyle were featured in the New York Times on Sunday.