Galit Aviv

Hitting crunch time this week, Salt Lake City fashion designer Keith Bryce finished a two-panel drawing, stitched a scarf and painted a doll’s face — all the preparations for his fashion and art show scheduled during the Sundance Film Festival’s opening weekend.

This will be the first show for the owner of Salt Lake City’s Filthy Gorgeous boutique since he was a contestant on last fall on Bravo’s “Project Runway.” “What I’m presenting now is a whole new level of fashion design,” Bryce said while working at his Artspace Pierpont Avenue shop. “I’m excited to impress them and exceed their expectations.”

Bryce wants to be noticed at Sundance, but he’s not the only one. At the internationally renowned festival devoted to

Model Liz Heaton in a piece from the newest collection from Keith Bryce. (Courtesy of Keith Bryce)

spotlighting indie films, the goal for many attendees remains simple: to see and be seen.Film purists aside, many attendees consider Sundance an outlet for networking, which is why the way someone dresses makes an impression, according to Bryce. “People are conscious of that when they go to Sundance,” the 27-year-old designer said. “What people are wearing, what’s in style, what designer, how much did they spend. A lot of it is about being seen, no matter what you’re wearing.”

And when you have people coming to Utah from the world’s fashion capitals, they don’t exactly dress down, despite the prospect of frigid weather. “The tourists want to look good,” said Lori Harris, owner of MaryJane’s, a Main Street Park City boutique. “They want to be seen by Brad Pitt and have him say, ‘Hey, she’s cute.’ “

For Harris, Sundance traffic offers her store the chance to show off the work of local and independent designers. Across Main Street, at the high-fashion Chloe Lane boutique, store buyers say it’s a given that when you have celebrities and the press in one place, fashion will follow.

Few years have reinforced the crossover between the fashion and film industries as obviously as this year’s festival, where

Friday’s buzzworthy premiere of R.J. Cutler’s documentary, “The September Issue,” spotlights Anna Wintour, the longtime editor of Vogue , an intriguing and polarizing figure in the fashion world. Also expected are PETA activists protesting fashionistas who wear fur.The documentary sparked a fashion-conscious theme for the post-movie opening gala. The basic idea, said Janice Boes, event organizer and owner of Pierpont Place, is that celebrities are fashion conscious — and interested in new looks. “[Sundance] is a great market for the fashion industry to deliver their new products,” Boes said. “They are the market that can afford the product, are hip, in the public eye, and will give the most exposure to the product.”

That heady mix also is attracting locally known fashion designer Jared Gold, now transplanted to Los Angeles, to return to Salt Lake City during the festival to throw another over-the-top show, titled, appropriately enough, “The Fashion Delirium Du Jour.”That fashion-film mashup inspired local filmmaker Frank Feldman’s comedic Slamdance Film Festival short, “Vapid Lovelies,” which follows a pair of young narcissistic men on a quest for their perfect Sundance outfits. The two gay wannabe fashion designers look to the film festival as the perfect introduction to the world of high fashion and superstar celebrity.

“We’re kind of poking fun at how seriously we all take Sundance,” Feldman said. “I’ve been there in that position of ‘Oh! What am I going to wear?’ It’s kind of funny to poke fun at that impulse we all have when going to Park City for the festival and get a little too dressed up.”

Beyond fashion, Feldman hopes his short film will offer a critique of our celebrity-obesessed society. “There is a weird thing in our culture that some people want to be famous, and are trying to get noticed, just be noticed,” the Salt Lake City filmmaker said. “We all want to take part in it somehow.”