Every year, I’m looking forward to May and June. Those are the months for student graduations, and for fashion schools, the annual student fashion shows. I love to see the runway featuring graduating student works, to catch a glimpse of their fashion point of view as they are about to embark their professional career in fashion. For some of the students, the annual fashion show is their last chance to present a concept purely from their own. So I find it to be a great honor to witness a snapshot of their life, to see how much they internalize and personalize fashion before they go deeper in the competitively fierce fashion industry.
Design by Berg Chen.
Design by Tiana Rashae.
Design by Robert Adrian Morel.
California College of the Arts is one of the schools whose annual graduation show I always anticipate. On May 15, the school presented 13 individual collections of three to four looks each from the class of 2015. The fashion program lead by Amy Williams is fiercely determined to emphasize sustainability and teach the process of making clothes from start to finish, not just design. From those lucky 13, my favorite looks of the night came from Berg Chen, Tiana Rashae, Vanina Howan, Robert Adrian Morel, Sophia Jay-Embry (my favorite collection), Farah Q. Faizi, and Hao Dong (winner of 7×7 Emerging Designer Award, announced at the end of the evening). The variety of silhouettes and techniques employed to create textiles, textures, and emotions are very refreshing, and you can imagine some of them being sold at your favorite store right now. Spring and summer collections seem to dominate, but there are several all-season or fall looks mixed in for good measures. The future looks bright for them; I wish them and California College of the Arts the very best.
Designs by Sophia Jay-Embry.
About the author: Mira Musank is a fashion and style blogger based in San Francisco Bay Area. You can see her fashion show reviews and DIY fashion projects on fafafoom.com.
Photography by Nicolas Ardelean