Nashville has long been known primarily for its vibrant music scene, and later for its success in the healthcare industry, with other fields taking a perennial backseat. But, with interest in both fashion and technology businesses based in Nashville at an all-time high, is the city poised to become a leading home for fashion tech startups?

If former banker Van Tucker has her way, fashion, at least, will find a permanent home in Nashville. When the Nashville Fashion Alliance (NFA) came into fruition this spring, it was the culmination of years of research, outreach and organizational work.

As Tucker recently told Fashionista, the goal of the NFA is to “build this infrastructure and nurture this ecosystem so that our brands can survive and thrive.” From a practical standpoint, that includes business mentorships for local emerging designers, emphasizing production in Tennessee and investing in training programs for local manufacturing facilities.

The city already has a small number of homegrown designers who have gotten attention from a nationwide, and in some cases, an international audience. The most notable Nashville natives may be the denim experts at Imogene + Willie, but labels like Elizabeth Suzann and Peter Nappi footwear are making a name for themselves outside of the confines of Music City, as well. If all goes well for the NFA and Tucker, who Fashionista reports has received advice from CFDA CEO Steven Kolb, that roster may swell considerably.

And it isn’t just fashion brands that are finding a more welcome home in Nashville now than ever before. The city has been experiencing a mini-boom in tech entrepreneurship, thanks in so small part to initiatives like The Nashville Entrepreneur Center and The Jumpstart Foundry, a tech product accelerator. The Nashville EC is one of nine Tech Hubs in North America that receives technical content, business tools, and infrastructure upgrades from Google.

Nashville has some practical advantages, as well, that makes it attractive to young companies. In addition to the abundance of coworking spaces available to startups – places like Refinery, Deavor, The Skillery and Weld – Entrepreneur Magazine named the city third on its list of Hot Startup Cities due in part to its growing population of young college graduates; only Houston has outpaced Nashville’s 48% growth in college grads from 2000 to 2012. It doesn’t hurt that the city has been mentioned among US cities with the best quality of life for the past few years, either.

All of this adds up to Nashville’s No. 2 spot as the fastest growing market for tech jobs in the country.

It was only a matter of time before VC funds began taking a renewed interest. While PriceWaterhouseCoopers initially placed the amount of VC investments in Tennessee-based companies at $144.2 million for 2014, which would have amounted to a 33% jump over last year, Launch Tennessee, a public-private partnership launched through the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, puts that number even higher; once angel investors and debt financing is figured in, they claim the state saw $276 million dollars in startup investments in 2014. Despite the initial discrepancy, each entity agrees that the far majority of those investments are toward companies with headquarters in Nashville.

PwC Nashville’s Dave Shaffer told the Nashville Business Journal, “Of note in Nashville is the diversity of industries being funded. From a long-term perspective, it helps an economy because it allows that region to be more recession proof [if one industry is negatively impacted] and it also helps attract talent.”

It also, in theory, promotes cross-pollination between industries. The better tech and fashion both do in Nashville, the more likely fashion tech companies are to succeed there, as well.

The most serious contender to Silicon Valley’s longstanding tech dominance is, of course, New York. 2015 was the first year that New York bypassed California in number of applications for funding for tech-based startups. San Francisco-based Startup Compass placed New York second in its 2015 Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking, and, as we noted in June, New York also placed atop a list of the most innovative cities in a joint report that examined local governments’ new business policies.

New York’s extensive fashion credentials also make it a natural home to the burgeoning fashion tech space. The city can lay claim to startups both established (including giants like Rent the Runway and Moda Operandi) and emerging (like this year’s FTF Founders of the Future winners The New Stand). But it’s hardly the only show in town, so to speak. Fashion tech startups like the Dallas-based LIKEtoKNOW.it, for example – and there are many others – have found worldwide success without moving their operations to a pre-ordained fashion or tech hub.

So whether or not these two industries can converge in Nashville as they continue to carve out their own niche remains to be seen, although the stage is certainly set for them to do.

Citing the city’s reputation as a leader in healthcare as an example of building a flourishing local industry from scratch, Tucker, for one, has faith on her town.

“I think we have a huge pool of talent, and I think the talent we have here is doing relatively well. But I think this cohesion and education and advocacy initiative, it will just be like putting gas on a fire,” she told The Nashville Ledger. “They all want it so bad. And we know how to do this. We’ve done it before.”