What is style? Is it the way a model walks, the suits he wears, the accessories she dons? They say style comes from within, but a pretty dress can’t hurt.
With Fashion Week at a close, the realization of style has finally sunk in. It’s not the brands you wear, or the jewelry you accessorize with, but rather it is the way in which you carry the things you wear.
Academy of Art University redefined style last Saturday. In a city where people barely stop to cross the street, the students at Academy of Art showed to the world the beauty of intricacy, design, style. Their inspirations came from everything from “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” to the dreadlocks found on the hippies of San Francisco.
Each student contradicted the next one’s style: loose dresses followed structured tops, only to be followed by honey-combed leather dresses. Every detail accurately matched the theme of the collection. Pink highlighted eye shadow, gold sunglasses, Converses, and platform heels. Pops of color in seas of black to flash the dreariness out of the day.
The students at Academy of Art University take style differently; fashion to them isn’t restricted by the conventional mediums of designers today. Melissa Christiansen, a jewelry designer, and Sherise Eways, a fashion designer, worked together to create beautiful outfits, one including a rose colored dress with silver metal bodice, melded to fit the curves of the wearer. Soo Jung Sung used a chef’s torch to create the textiles on her outfits that were in part created by newsprint paper. The students had no bounds or limitations as to what to use.
The students didn’t exactly redefine fashion, nor did they tell the public the latest trends. Rather, they opened the eyes of the audience to a world of clothing where seasons didn’t dictate what you wore-your feelings did. You could see Felice Morganti’s black leather honeycomb skirt on a girl on her way to dinner at the Met, or an athlete peeling off his protective layers to wear the loose creative suits by Young Jun Ryu, complete with mismatched shoes. The clothes represented the University: delightfully fresh, ing’eacute;nue, unique.
There was a moment at the end of the show where a male model hugged his two designers. He did it so freely, that it was at that moment that one realized the freeness of the clothing; the designers want their consumers to be at ease in their clothing, to feel like the pieces are extensions of themselves.
Take inspiration like the students at Academy of Art — that’s not to say use paper to make your outfits, and malleable metal to form dresses, but rather learn to incorporate any creativeness into what you wear.
College is about experimentation, with everything from the classes you take to the clothes you wear. It takes effort, yes, but in the long run you’ll realize that it’s really worth it.