As part of Youth Design Academy, our fist-year Youth Designers enjoyed a terrific workshop led by MassArt Fashion Design student Christian Restrepo, whose extraordinary, award-winning clothing designs have been showcased at the ICA, in Boston Magazine, and many other venues and publications.
The workshop took place in MassArt’s Fashion Lab and began with Christian showing his designs and talking about what inspires him. “The designs Christian showed us were very interesting and different. I learned that you can be inspired by anything and everything,” said Youth Designer Tara Rahman, a junior at Boston International School. Students were wowed by the theatricality of Christian’s work and by the resourceful, often painstaking methods he employs to construct his designs into real clothing to be modeled and photographed.
Christian’s presentation challenged the students to think about fashion in a new way—as visual story-telling and “wearable art” that needs to be bold, daring, dramatic, and original in order to get attention and compete in today’s crowded high-fashion market. Jessica Villar, a Youth Designer from Brighton High School, echoed Tara’s sentiment. “I learned that anything can be a great idea,” she said, “like when Christian used the bottom of a frying pan in his dress design!” Yes, Christian did, in fact, incorporate an image of a frying pan into the design of a gorgeous gown; after he cooked his breakfast one morning, he was struck by the interesting combination of colors and textures left in the frying pan, so he photographed it, printed the photograph on fabric, and designed the rest of the dress to harmonize with it.
“What I really LOVED about the workshop is that we got to do our own designs. It was really cool and GREAT!” said Janet Diaz, another Youth Designer from Brighton High.
The students were assigned to each design a “collection” of three looks on a common theme, employing many typical steps in the design process—defining the brief, creating a mood board, sharing their ideas and sketches for feedback, exploring a range of tools and materials, and finally presenting their work in critique format for discussion. “The project we did was helpful because we got to learn about the process and the work it takes to just make one design,” said Tara.
Although time was short, the students took up the challenge to mine their own interests and look towards what is important to them outside the world of fashion as inspiration for their clothing designs. Janet, for example, made great use of various materials available in the MassArt fashion lab, cutting up fabric swatches and collaging from old magazines, to explore and communicate her vision of clothing inspired by the colors and textures of the beach in her native Puerto Rico. “I’m very proud of my design, “ said Janet, “and Christian was an awesome teacher! I would really love to work with him again!”
“The Fashion Design workshop was a great way to engage our students to think more about what what they see—not just the ‘how’ but the ‘why’ of fashion design,” says Alisa Aronson, Youth Design Education Specialist. “Moving from uncritically following trends to thinking more deeply about their individuality and how they can express their uniqueness by being resourceful, imaginative, and using the design process to create their own looks is empowering.”
The chance to learn more about the world of fashion is of strong interest to many of today’s teens. Youth Design provides a variety of opportunities for students to explore fashion design process, learn about careers in the field, and express themselves through this medium while building a range of transferrable skills.
Youth Design thanks Christian Restrepo for inspiring the students with his fashion designs and his teaching, and also MassArt Fashion Design faculty Sondra Grace and Meg Young for working with Alisa to plan and coordinate the workshop.