SAN MARCOS -- As David Solomon now knows, success in the flashy, high-stakes world of fashion begins with hours of phone calls and e-mails and ends with a 15-second stroll down a runway.

The runway part arrives Friday night at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido, but on Thursday afternoon, the hours of preparation were still ticking away.

As Palomar College's fashion design and merchandising students readied for the school's annual fashion show, Solomon and dozens of other students were putting the finishing touches on an event expected to draw more than 500 people.

"Let me tell you, there are a lot more intricate details than I anticipated," he said Thursday. "I thought it was just, get a space, get some lights, get some models, and it's pretty straightforward from there. But it's a lot more complicated -- the little tiny things you don't think about."

Solomon estimated that he had put in 135 hours while helping to plan the two-hour show, which begins at 7 p.m. and costs $15 to attend.

Student designers at five local high schools -- Fallbrook, Poway and three schools in Southwest Riverside County -- will also have work on display, organizers said.

Rita Campo Griggs, a fashion teacher at Palomar, said that 300 to 400 students study the art of designing and selling garments every year at the college.

"The merchandising aspect of it is the advertising -- the promotion and marketing of a fashion product," she said. "Then the design is the construction and manufacturing of the product -- from the concept to the actual physical garment."

When people think fashion, Milan may come to mind sooner than San Marcos, but Campo Griggs pointed out that North County has a healthy retail industry that delivers to local customers the concepts often modeled in New York and Europe.

Many students who went through Palomar's fashion program have found success on those larger stages, she said.

"Not like Calvin Klein, but we have had students who were very successful in opening their own boutiques, or going to New York and becoming designers with their own companies," said Campo Griggs.

At Friday night's show, student designers will be showing off their clothing lines -- defined as five or more coordinating garments -- at an event organized and run by students learning how to showcase fashion merchandise.

Even some of the models will come from the college, after seeing posters for the event and applying to walk the runway.

It's the culmination of weeks of work, and Campo Griggs said the event has grown significantly since its inception more than 20 years ago in the Howard Brubeck Theater.

"The theater holds just under 400 people, and we grew out of that," she recalled. "Then we were having it in the student union, and we grew out of that, so now we're at the Escondido Center for the Arts and we have over 500 people. It just keeps growing."

While it may test some students' resolve, the event is a good dry run for a notoriously brutal industry, said Campo Griggs.

"In all honesty, the students do this in about eight weeks. Things happen quickly in the fashion industry, and you have to react quickly," she said. "It's great life experience for them to put it together just like you would in the real world."

The California Center for the Performing Arts is at 340 N. Escondido Blvd. Tickets will be available at the door.

Contact staff writer Tom Pfingsten at (760) 740-3516 or tpfingsten@nctimes.com.