Since winter break, Jenny Lerczak has been creating four ensembles she'll finally be able to show off at the Student Apparel Design Association's annual fashion show April 13 at Wharton Center's Pasant Theatre.
This year's theme is "Rock 'N Vogue," in which student designers each chose a song to correspond with their collections. Dressed in voluminous, structured garments, Lerczak's models will strut down the runway to Nelly Furtado's "Maneater."
"I picked that song just because it's a fun song my friends and I like to dance to," said the SADA president and apparel and textile design senior. "It's just funny, and I wanted clothes that had an attitude, so I figured that would be the perfect song."
In order to participate in the show, students had to submit designer packets by Jan. 31, which included providing fabric swatches, model forms, sketches of the garments and an inspiration page.
"We knew what the theme of the show was going to be last spring," Lerczak said. "The idea is to keep people thinking about it."
Apparel and textile design senior Lagi Nadeau is creating a Parisian-themed collection and began constructing seven ensembles last fall. For inspiration, she researched French buildings to decide upon silhouettes and a color scheme.
"(I saw) lots of gold colors, white and black, burgundies and blues, so I went with that for my color theme," she said. "Then I used geometric shapes and angles. There were a lot of interesting angles to the buildings, and I wanted to have a lot of really structured clothing that had a lot of lines to it."
Though she's been toiling away for months, Nadeau still has work to do making dresses, pants, adding finishing touches to other garments, handweaving fabric and designing gold jewelry.
"It takes a long time to go throughout the process," she said. "It's hard to get (garments) exactly how you had in your mind to a 3-D version of it. I'm getting to that stressful point now. I couldn't imagine how much time it takes (total)."
But Nadeau and Lerczak's hard work will likely pay off, as evidenced by 2006 graduate Aaron Anderson, who participated in SADA's fashion show for three years. He's currently a visual stylist at Nordstrom's corporate headquarters in Seattle, which includes styling mannequins, displays and in-store fashion shows.
"I think that I've done the SADA fashion shows was a big factor of me getting the job," he said. "They were definitely looking forward to having someone on the team who has that experience. We got to do quite a few fun things recently. Last week, Diane von Furstenberg was in town — Nordstrom brought her in. They do a spring fashion show, and I got to meet her and she revealed her spring collection, so it was definitely fun."
The only element missing from Anderson's job is the actual designing aspect.
Because he doesn't want to lose this skill, he's working on a collection for a gay pride fundraiser fashion show that will take place in June.
"A lot of other local designers are going to be there, so it's great for me to network with them," he said. "It also just keeps me designing. I want to be a stylist for movies or television, or some type of costume designer. When I get my experience, I'll move to California or Vancouver — there's a lot of movies filmed in Vancouver.
"I've never been one to take the safe route. I don't think it gets you too far. I think (taking risks) has pushed me more to find something that I want to do."
