As the lights dim at the Ryerson Theatre this week on the largest runway ever constructed on campus, 5,000 spectators —including about 100 media — will have their taste of a fashion exhibiton that will cost more than half-a-million-dollars to execute, all told.

The name of the yearly event now carries international prestige: Mass Exodus.

After all, it’s the school of fashion’s flagship brand.

“The scope and the dimension is tremendous,” says Robert Ott, chair of the school of fashion. “It’s literally the largest student program in North America.”

This year, more than any other, the school has upped the ante in a bold move to unveil sweeping changes to its identity, striving to stake a claim on the international fashion education marketplace.

In the face of a global recession and budgetary belt-tightening at Ryerson, how might you accomplish such a feat?

In a word: branding.

“You need to be able to stand out,” Ott says. “It’s not so much that we’re trying to deal with the competition. It’s more the emotional attachment that a brand gives to a constituent.”

Translation — if the thought of the school of fashion triggers warm fuzzy feelings in the minds of prospective students, alumni, and within public and private sectors, the school stands to gain.

“Mass Exodus is actually a brand that came into being in 1989,” Ott says. “It’s an aspect of the school that we use to market ourselves to the industry and the media.”

With Ryerson alumni inundating the industry (an estimated 90 per cent of Abercrombie and Fitch technical designers are grads, for example), and names like David Dixon, Jessica Biffi, and most recently Erdem – who just snagged £200,000 courtesy of the BFC/Vogue Fund – hitting household status, our fashion school has already laid the groundwork for an international takeover. Eventually.

Taking a cue from Ryerson’s Five-Year Plan, laid bare in 2008, Ott’s implementing his own Seven-Year Plan for the fashion school, stressing student engagement, innovation in research, and maintaining a positive reputation, among other objectives.

“That is all part of the strategy in realizing the academic plan,” Ott says.

However, some students feel the school of fashion is trying too hard to be “trendy.”

Jilliann Grant, a fourth-year design student who modelled in Ryerson’s LG Fashion Week show last week, says she’s glad Ryerson is gaining a higher profile within the fashion industry, but thinks sometimes the school goes too far.

Grant, who is also showing a dancewear collection this week in Mass Exodus, says she’s disappointed the Top 25 collections were chosen by third-party curator Sarah Casselman, an editor at FASHION Magazine, instead of being based on academic marks.

“I think it’s all part of the whole branding thing,” she says. “It’s changing the way our show’s put together and marketed. It helps them build their reputation.”

Sophie McCulloch, who produced the show last year, says bringing in a curator from a reputable industry publication is a good idea for a school trying to make a name for itself.

“Really we’re promoting the students,” she says.

“It adds an extra level of professionalism to the show. It 's just further emphasizing that this is the future of the fashion industry.”

Heather Constable will show a costume collection called The end is there at this year’s editon of Mass Exodus.

She says she can understand the delimma the school faces, too.

“Ryerson definitely has an image they want to portray to the fashion industry,” she says.

 “They want it to be diverse, but they also want it to be trendy fashion.”

Either way, she can’t wait.

“I’m excited,” she says. “It’s gonna be sweet.”