Hello!
Maria here, I'm a senior in the Fashion Studies program at Kendall College of
Art and Design and this is my last semester! Can I get an amen?!
If I described my style in 3 words it would be
playful, experimental, and colorful. I tend to be attracted to complimentary
colors and have consistently used them in my work at KCAD. What I mean by
experimental is I feel like my taste changes every other week. I have so much
left to explore in my craft and I get excited with all the possibility in being
a maker. Therefore, every project is an opportunity to experiment with my
newfound inspiration! A lot of my inspiration comes from other artists that I
follow on Instagram. I want to take elements of their work and combine it with
my own style to do something new. This means that my own personal style tends
to fluctuate here and there because I'm finding new inspiration every day.
This year I was supposed to move to New York and
attend the Fashion Institute of Technology, located in downtown Manhattan.
Eventually I decided that I wanted to stay in Grand Rapids to finish up my
bachelors, as this is where my heart is. Almost exactly one year ago I was
searching for inspiration for a school project. My class was split into groups
of two, and each group was expected to come up with a design with an umbrella
(yes, an umbrella) incorporated into it somehow. What do you do when you have
absolutely no idea where to begin? GOOGLE. I googled "pannier dress" (in
historical fashion, a pannier is "part of a skirt looped up around the hips." AKA large
shelf-like extensions of fabric protruding from the hips to exaggerate the
female form). Panniers resembled what I envisioned for my
soon-to-be-deconstructed umbrella. In my pursuit of pannier dresses, I found
one that I was really drawn to. After following the image to the original site
I realized that this design was made by an FIT Grad who had graduated about 8
months prior to my search. I thought "what the hey" and I reached out
to her and told her how much I loved her work, and how I hoped to attend FIT
the following autumn semester. To my surprise, she emailed me back within a
couple days and we quickly got to talking about fashion school, our design
processes, and New York City. In her first response, she said something that
has stuck with me since. I'm not sure what I originally asked her, but I'm sure
it was something like "Where do you find inspiration?" or "What
do you keep in mind while coming up with your designs?", and she said "These
days, I find that while designing I try to focus on things and subjects that
make me really happy. That may sound silly but sometimes you get can get really
caught up in trying to make something super conceptual that it loses its
meaning to you."
I want to capture what makes me happy in my designs. I don't want to take everything so seriously, I'd like my personality to be reflected in the things I make. If I can make someone smile or simply give them a moment of light-hearted-ness then that means I'm doing it right. My senior collection is focused on self-expression, and how artists, specifically, express themselves. It all starts with one mark on a piece of paper. I'm really excited for this upcoming semester and to end this huge chapter of my life with a bang. It is CRAZY to me that this is my last semester. This is the beginning of the end!
The name of the designer I reached out to is Marion Kunz, and if you'd like to view the work that inspired me then follow this link: https://www.notjustalabel.com/collection/mkunz31794/rococo
-Maria
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