Fringe: The Future of Fashion

FRINGE

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Gabriella Bower Beauty & Style Editor

T

o be on the fringe of something means you are radical, on the outskirts of the mainstream. If you think about the people who push the boundaries of the ever-evolving fashion industry, they are those who are thinking differently, expanding the circle, moving things forward. One cannot possibly predict the future, but if you are redefining the present you are setting the stage for what comes next.

For as long as I can remember, I have loved fashion. While some kids were collecting baseball cards, I was collecting clothes. But it’s never just been about the materials — I always saw fashion as a way to express myself. Every season the artistry changes and trends come and go, but it’s never stopped being fun for me. As I’ve grown, I’ve realized the amount of power this platform holds as an art form in our world and how underutilized it is for social change.

Between promoting sustainable thinking and providing new innovators with a blank slate, the future of fashion

— and the betterment of tomorrow’s world — could very well lie in the hands of the industry’s up and coming creatives.

From the models to the designers and the people behind the scenes of issue, every person is an NYU student or alum striving to push the boundaries of fashion. Whether through redefining the industry’s standards of diversity, body image or product development, these new artists eschew the current norms, working every day to refine tomorrow’s clothes.

I would like to thank Anna, Polina and Tatiana, our fierce multimedia team whose aesthetic and creativity help everyone see fashion through a new lens. I also owe thanks to Wen and Easton, the incredibly talented design team who helped create the issue you’re holding right now.

I want to thank our models and designers featured here, who inspire us all to tirelessly pursue our dreams.

And lastly, I would like to thank you, the reader, for caring about where we go from here.

Model Shaye Davis wears piece from SubLucid by Rachel Wang

RACHEL WANG Sophie Shaw | Violet Vision Editor

Fashion and fantasy are two realms that highlight the whimsical, inspire imagination and have their dark sides.

Designer and Gallatin alumna Rachel Wang, hopes to marry all of these facets between the two worlds in her new brand RÈNWEAR, which is set to launch in February 2017.

The brand focuses on storytelling through fashion, juxtaposing the role of the woman within the context of different influences from art, history, folklore, philosophy, culture and literature. Wang’s concept for her brand stems from her deep-rooted interest in the fantastical.

“I’ve always been fascinated with fantastical things and monsters, and honestly, the dark side of it all,” Wang said. “I find it more interesting than a good hero. It’s always more fun to explore why something is corrupted.”

RÈNWEAR isn’t the first time she’s explored storytelling through fashion. At the 2016 Gallatin Fashion Show, entitled TechStyles, Wang based her collection around a utopian, communist society where technology dominates and everything is free. Her designs featured simple patchwork, strappy details and silhouettes based on comfort and utility.

“The catch is that [the society] lives in a compound, because it’s post-apocalyptic,”

Wang said. “So my collection has a lot of jumpsuits, it’s pretty simple, but it still looks polished because they’re comfortable.”

The collection exemplifies how her uncomplicated aesthetic manages to express a much more complex story. The clean lines and familiar silhouettes point towards a pared-down wardrobe, while the substantial harness-like straps and strategic patchwork allude to her utopian society.

Her experience designing for the Gallatin Fashion Show, as well as interning at various designer labels (including positions at Marc Jacobs and Rag & Bone) each of the four years of her undergraduate career, exposed her to both the design and manufacturing side of the fashion industry. Now, she continues to balance those two aspects by developing her own brand, while also working in production at Calvin Klein.

Wang is currently in the process of designing her new collection, which will be featured in the Spring 2017 Gallatin Fashion Show. The theme for the upcoming show is power, and designers may interpret that however they desire. Wang is conceptualizing the power of a dream for her collection.

“It follows a story that makes no sense, because it’s a dream,” Wang said. “But it’s like this running away, escaping danger story where you end up getting in more danger every time you try — just a really surreal kind of idea.”

Along with the stories that develop within the designer’s collections, Wang’s own story is being played out as she continues to explore the fantastical possibilities between fiction and fashion.

Ali Webb | Staff Writer

h a y e Davis may be balancing a budding modeling career with studying film and TV at Tisch School of the Arts, but she is surprisingly relaxed about it all. Sitting in the Think Coffee on Mercer Street, she wears a T-shirt, navy blue coat and Vans, comfortable choices for a packed day of classes and work.

Davis, now a junior, started modeling during her first year at NYU. She had considered it for most of her life because of her height, but could not work it into her schedule before college. She eventually started exploring this interest through the networking website Model Mayhem, which helped her meet people and book test shoots to build her portfolio.

Davis spent spring break of 2016 going to open calls, ultimately signing with BMG New York in April.

As a film major, Davis says her favorite part of modeling is the collaboration with photographers.

“I really appreciate it more as an art form,” Davis said. “I see it like singing or dancing; it’s a skill and you’re bringing something to the table.” She also enjoys seeing the finished product. For her, the job’s biggest challenge is maintaining confidence, due to the constant rejection and focus on physical attributes.

Davis would like to see more positivity in the fashion industry in general; she hopes designers will start emphasizing health over thin-

ness. Legislative measures in other countries have promoted this, but she thinks responsibility ultimately falls on the designers’ casting.

Trying not restrict her activities to class and modeling, Davis in fact holds four additional jobs. She interns for Teen Nick at Viacom, is a campus representative for Vans and is a part of Fusion Film Festival, which promotes women in film, television and the media. After our interview, she is headed to her work study job at NYU TV. Obviously, these obligations leave little free time for the student-model. She balances everything through careful time management, squeezing opportunities and obligations wherever they fit.

“Yesterday I went to a casting during my lunch break on my internship,” Davis said. “I didn’t tell anybody I was going and just went.

Thankfully, nobody noticed I was gone a little longer than usual.”

Davis also prioritizes her commitments depending on the time of year: she dedicates significant time to modeling in the summer, but focuses more on film when classes are in session. While she enjoys being a model, she is not sure if she sees herself doing this in the long run. Earning a film degree always remains her top priority.

Ultimately, Davis wants to work in late night television like Fred Armisen; she mentioned “Saturday Night Live” in general as well as Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers as some of her career aspirations.

A rising model with intelligence and artistic interests, Davis is certainly one to watch. Whether it’s during Fashion Week, a successful career in television or something else altogether, she has promising talent and a strong work ethic that will lead her to fascinating opportunities.

SHAYE DAVIS

TYLER SANCHEZ Sherah Ndjongo | Contributing Writer

h e modeling industry’s influence has grown significantly in recent years, allowing for models to play a larger role in fashion by embodying a designer’s vision or a brand’s image. Tyler Sanchez, a 19-year-old Film and Television student at Tisch, has been modeling for over six years. Represented by the agency Next Miami since 2003, Sanchez has had many notable opportunities like shooting for clients such as Coca Cola, JC Penney and Rue 21, as well as modeling for a Tom Ford store opening in Miami.

Sanchez has learned a great deal about the ins and outs of the modeling industry. He says that modeling, like any job, is a service, which explains why agencies go through great lengths to protect models’ rights. Additionally, for many models, pay is a key factor driving them to pursue this line of work. However, it’s not just that models are paid well.

It’s also a matter of supply and demand. The high pay, along with the competition, motivates mod-

els to do their absolute best.

“Accommodating talent should be your number one concern,” Sanchez said. This ties into the fact that modeling has allowed Sanchez to meet many brilliant people who share common creative interests with him. In fact, simply because he brought up the fact that he’s a Film and Television major to a prominent makeup artist at one shoot, Sanchez is now tasked with creating a documentary involving him.

While it’s difficult to say what his future goals are, Sanchez hopes to eventually move to the other side of the camera and be a filmmaker. Although he does not want to pursue modeling as a lifelong career, he certainly would like to focus more on it for a while after college and see where that route takes him.

Some of Sanchez’s inspirations include his agent, who taught him to demand respect, and the people who work behind-thescenes on a set, whose interest, dedication and success in an art form inspire him to follow suit.

Overall, Sanchez encapsulates his experience in the modeling industry and his passion for art with the statement, “being a model is a lot like being a canvas, and other people are painting you.”

Camille Larkins | Staff Writer

SKYE DARU

k y e Daru won’t tolerate being seen as one-dimensional. In the new age of the social media supermodel, Daru knows the key to success is more than just showing off her latest spread in Teen Vogue. She has to be versatile, personable, transparent and mysterious — all at once. It’s not an easy feat, but Daru executes this balancing act flawlessly, her Instagram showing off a combination of behind-thescenes photos from shoots, pictures with friends in Washington Square Park and the occasional badass post-boxing pose.

Daru, who balances her modeling career with her musical aspirations, certainly leads a diverse lifestyle. But as an Asian-American woman on the runway she’s well aware of the lack of ethnic diversity in the modeling world — something she sees changing.

“I think the future of fashion is diversity,” Daru said. “Especially in fashion week this year — for example, the Kanye [West] show was centered around diversity and culture. I’m excited to see different looks and ethnicities.”

With her poise and levelheadedness, it’s hard to believe that Daru is only a first-year student.

She is vastly more experienced and professional than her peers: Daru signed with Ford Models as a freshman in high school and has

been working nonstop since then.

Having lived alongside other models in Times Square during her summer before college, sharing a Third North dorm room with five other girls is nothing new to her. “[Over the summer] there were seven girls and bunkbeds and everything — the first time I walked in there were bras and food everywhere,” Daru said.

Daru already has big academic plans with her double major in recorded music from Clive Davis and computer science from the College of Arts and Science. It was fellow model and noted NYU student Karlie Kloss who inspired her to look into coding; she took one of the supermodel’s Kode with Klossy classes and was instantly enamored with the subject. Music, however, remains her real passion: her strong voice and songwriting skills shine in electropop songs like “DNA” and “Wild Side,” the latter of which has over 45,000 streams on SoundCloud.

Daru is a driven quadruple threat. Now signed with Wilhelmina Models, she hopes to walk in a big name show at Fashion Week and get an internship in the music business during her time here. For most students, the first year of college is difficult in and of itself, let alone having a budding music and modeling career as well.

“Time management is something I definitely had to overcome in high school — I was missing school for shoots and meetings but I still managed to do well and graduate at the top of my class,” Daru said. “I just think the most important thing about being a model is keeping a level head.”

Nails courtesy of TheLaserGirls

Model Skye Daru wears piece from Rachel Wang Collection

Brina Jeffries | Staff Writer We all know the traditional designs that appear in New York Fashion Week and in glossy Hearst and Conde Nast magazines. While these fashion houses have shaped the industry today, we are heading into a new era of fashion. Meet NYU graduates Dhemerae Ford and Sarah C. Awad — TheLaserGirls — who have created 3D printed nail art designs, a revolutionary move for the tech world that perfectly overlaps in the fashion industry.

Ford and Awad are recent BFA studio art graduates from Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. Fashion was not always something both of the girls considered for their post-grad careers, Ford said.

“Sarah was actually the person who peaked my interest in fashion design.

Sarah and I started working on the nails in 2012, and it was then when I started to realize the potential 3D printing has in the fashion industry, and that it’s not limited to accessories.”

The girls first met in their digital art class and were both hired at LaGuardia Studio, a 3D printing studio, which is where the duo began to collaborate.

Their first project stemmed from Awad’s idea to create 3D printed fingernails and

Ford’s plan on how to construct them, due to her background in digital art.

3D printing is not the typical medium that is used to design clothing. Nonetheless, TheLaserGirls’ interest in the use of medium was a result of their drive to create new groundbreaking ways for nail art and the use of dimension and hard textures that comes with 3D printing.

These girls are gifted innovators, but they say that their jobs havent always been glamorous. In the earlier days, they would take pictures of their creations on an iPhone and style the photographs over butcher paper in the Palladium dorm study lounge. Once they were up for 42 hours straight, shooting different manicures on Ford’s hand.

Now, the duo has an exhibition in Moscow and plan on designing a new line of wearables such as nails and larger scale creations. However, Ford still works at LaGuardia Studio and Awad works as the manager of facilities at NYU IT. They

want budding designers to know that their passion doesn’t have to start out as a full-time job, even if it may get there down the road.

“Whether or not you’re lucky enough to be able to make a living doing what you love, you can always continue doing it in your spare time — and you need to make that time,” Ford said. “You can always find an excuse to not do something; stay motivated, be persistent, and work hard. Simple but effective!”

Nails courtesy of TheLaserGirls

Model Tyler Sanchez wears piece from Matthew Russo - Collection 1

MATTHEW RUSSO Pamela Jew | Staff Writer

Hailing from suburban Pennsylvania, Gallatin senior Matthew Russo came to NYU knowing he wanted to pursue a career in the fashion industry. Russo’s experience derives from him being selftaught and self-driven. His fashion design and entrepreneurship have been shaped by the extra classes he takes at Parsons and RIT and some of NYU’s more fashion-driven classes, such as Gallatin’s Practium in Fashion Business and Stern’s Dynamics of the Fashion Industry Experiential Learning Seminar. With graduation on the horizon, Russo hopes to get a job at a fashion start-up while continuing to work on his line, Provenance.

Russo’s philosophy behind fashion design is like that of any design.

“If you understand art and you understand basic design principles, then you can apply it to any understood medium,” Russo said.

He also draws inspiration from other designers’ lines, such as Jerry Lorenzo’s Fear of God, as well as his personal fashion taste. In Russo’s inaugural collection, trendy street wear clashes with formal wear. Think average button up gets an upgrade with a twist as trite buttons are replaced with an unexpected zipper. All the fabrics are woven with close to no elasticity, giving way for a more structured look.

All of the designs from this line keep with Russo’s mission of conscious fashion.

Russo does all the material

sourcing himself and aims for all materials to be made in the United States. Russo works closely with the MCM Enterprise factory in Brooklyn and oversees the final products of his designs. All of the pieces are designed with an androgynous audience in mind and lack a bust. However, the pieces are all based on Russo’s body type, so the line is catered more towards the male consumer.

As Russo reflects on the future of his own brand, he can’t help but think about the future of the overall industry as well.

“I think brands will go to further lengths to create a unique experience for consumers,” Russo said. “Just offering product is not enough.

I think there will be less focus on individual distribution channels. Technology will become a more integral part of the industry, whether that’s through distribution or the fibers themselves. Conscious consumption will become a bigger aspect of the industry.

Environmentally and ethically, the fashion industry is behind and needs to catch up.”

Provenance is currently just a side project for Russo as he seeks out sponsors and grants to raise more capital for his line. Over the next few years, Russo hopes to refine an overall aesthetic for the collection and have a clearer vision of his consumer audience. He plans on working in the industry for the next few years in hopes of raising capital to bring his brand to full fruition.

Models Skye Daru and Shaye Davis wear pieces from Matthew Russo - Collection 1

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FRINGE