Since 2005, the School of Fashion at Academy of Art University in San Francisco has shown the collections of recent graduates during New York Fashion Week–an incredible exposure opportunity for these young designers on the rise. This season, the run of the show featured 7 collections and several emerging designers.
First up was Jungah Lee, who used the faded colors of antique books as inspiration for the hand dyeing and painting of her latex and silk fabrics. Her collection featured pale layers, pleated and manipulated with silk applique tops, dresses, and skirts, designed to mimic warped and torn pages of old novels.
Cara Chiappetta found inspiration in femininity and examining how a woman is perceived. Her fabrics, which included rubber, silk, mesh, wool, and nylon, bonded to give her collection a very futuristic look, using lots of greys with a subtle polka-dotted trend throughout. The garments included dresses, high-waisted trousers, and plenty of cut-outs with asymmetrical neck pieces.
Louie Llewellyn, the sole menswear designer of the bunch, teamed up with Xiang Zhang, a knitwear designer, to create their collection. Louie used the disagreement between a hard and soft men’s wear silhouette as his theme, building woven pieces with sharp edges and then adding in softer fabrics in contrast. Xiang used over 30 swatches to determine the final combination that were used with a special knitting technique that took approximately 50 hours to finish each piece. The look was knit pants layered with sweaters and hoodie-scarf hybrid accent pieces.
The next collection was a Print Collaboration, that was the masterpiece of a group of technical design, fashion design, and textile design students working together. Womenswear, the pieces included several mismatched prints in browns, greens and blues, layered and tiered with various fabrics unexpectedly. The models donned ankle socks and flat shoes, including 3 young girls in the show as well.
April Howard was inspired by the work of sculptors, decaying concrete and plastic of an urban wasteland–her pieces representative of discarded items. The entire collection was made out of leather, in blacks and burnt browns, with a bunching and overlapped aesthetic.
Camilla Olson took her theme from her fascination with samurai arts, producing a collection based on women as rebels breaking the restrictions of historically constrained roles. Soft silk chiffon dresses flowed underneath an outer ‘cage,’ which varied from look-to-look from cubed, to diagonal and straight across, mostly in black, white and neutrals.
Finally, Maria Korovilas, took the runway with a collection that incorporated metal encrusted pieces and detailing. Bronze embellishments over nude dresses, and beaded shoulder pads over a chiffon dress with a peek-a-boo bead-encrusted train were the types of accents that tied the line together. Lace embroidery and beaded body pieces also made their mark, all part of her hand beading which took over 600 hours to complete.
Amateur was not at all the overall feel of this show. Based on the expressions and reactions within the crowd, expectations were exceeded and an incredible young crop of talented designers were revealed–all now boasting with one New York Fashion Week under their belts and hopefully many more to come.
Images by Randy Brooke
Academy of Art University | 2011 Spring Collection Part 1
Academy of Art University | 2011 Spring Collection Part 2
Finale Walk: