05 27 20 ArtsThread Quarantine Styling Editorial

ArtsThread May 27, 2020 “Academy of Art University School of Fashion Students Create Quarantine Editorials” Final year Editorial Styling students from School of Fashion have worked together to produce three magazines made during Covid-19. https://www.artsthread.com/news/academy-of-art-universityschool-of-fashion-students-create-quarantine-editorials/

May 27, 2020 Written by Calum Ross Fashion Design

Above: Academy of Art University School of Fashion Editorial Styling students 1. Pia Haro/ 2 Zexian Yang/ 3 Ze Wu and Leif Lei/ 4-5 Saybria Dayton Final year Editorial Styling students from the Academy of Art University School of Fashion have worked together to produce three magazines made during Covid-19.

Working in small groups, the students had to collaborate while apart, sharing ideas digitally and taking on multiple roles and responsibilities including modelling, photography and design. The garments shown in the pages of the magazines were all either made from scratch specifically for the project, or sourced from the students’ own wardrobes.

Ze Wu and Leif Lei The first magazine, titled 1solation, includes a polaroid diary by Zexian Yang which documents the first 46 days alone. Ze Wu and Leif Lei’s contribution explores how isolation can feel like a cage. The styling and set design relies heavily on the use of toilet paper to create an almost straightjacket-like binding around the model.

Pia Haro Antidote – the second magazine in the project – features a collaboration between student Pia Haro and her mother titled Bittersweet. Haro creates matching garments, masks and gloves and models them with her neighbour’s pet cat and dog. Saybria Dayton also worked with her mother on the project Zoom BTS which explores what we show to the world on digital meetings and what is happening just out of sight of the camera. The humorous spreads are split in half showing the upper half of Dayton dressed to impress, and the lower half in pyjamas and odd socks.

Oneself magazine The third magazine, Oneself, features examples of how to create art out of your surroundings when stuck in isolation such as a dress made from a plastic bag and another from home furnishings.

Flore Morton, Associate Director of the School of Fashion at the Academy of Art tells us: ‘On March 16, San Francisco was the first city in the United States to put a shelter-in-place and the Academy of Art University went remote like many other universities over the world. It happened right before senior styling students started working on their group fashion magazine project.’ Morton continues: ‘Instead of changing the project due to the circumstances, I decided to move forward with it, giving a chance for students to give their point of view as stylists of what is happening, using all skills they have learned at school. Many wore several hats, from styling, art direction, photography, modeling, makeup, hair styling and graphic design, and even enlisting their parent to take pictures.

Each group was spread all over the world, after some students got laid off from their side retail jobs, had to move back with their parents in North Carolina, stay

abroad longer in Mexico, move back to China in quarantine, or stayed in San Francisco sheltered in their apartment with limited contact with the outside.’

‘The three fashion magazines they produced is an eerie recording of their quarantine,’ she concludes.

More on Academy of Art University from their website.