W27 – SPRING 2022
Metamorphosis:
21-year-old Emerson Kobak of Emerson Isa, a soon-to-be graduating fashion designer
at FIT, shares her passion for creating designs in a world of unattainable standards with her collection, Metamorphosis: Distortion. Emerson Kobak, a 21-year-old fashion designer from Westport, Connecticut, is a thriving fashion design student with a sportswear concentration at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She started her clothing brand, Emerson Isa, with the intention of making people feel and look good. Kobak is also keen on her sustainable efforts when designing, pattern making, sewing and packaging.
all the rules we must follow,” Kobak says. The distorted coat she created is oversized, almost as if it is overtaking the wearer. “This feeling is something that we as women feel when we are overtaken by what is expected of us.”
Emerson Kobak, 21 year-old Sportswear designer at FIT
Kobak explains that the distortion of the clothing represents something dark, but can also be seen as liberating. “It’s multifaceted in a way that we can lose ourselves while trying to please others, but then reclaim our own narrative,” she says. Through distortion and alteration of the garments, one can take what they have been given and modify the rules to achieve what they desire. “This is rebellion in its most beautiful form,” Kobak says.
For her senior thesis, Kobak is required to take a capstone course, which according to FIT’s curriculum, “students design, create, develop and prepare professionally executed sportswear.” As part of her final thesis collection, titled Metamorphosis: Distortion, Kobak represents how women distort themselves to conform to the unrealistic standards of society. The coat’s top panel is made of burnt and “We feel we must change ourselves to recycled dryer sheets, but the majority of fit the mold – represented in my pieces the panels are distorted by using a hot by taking fabric from its original form glue gun to create a pattern and heat gun and changing it completely,” Kobak to melt the glue. Kobak used an elastic says. Deconstruction and altering the threading technique to shirr the third fabrics represents multiple stages of panel of the coat. metamorphosis as a woman that serve as The dress worn underneath the coat the basis for Kobak’s designs: Insecurity, is made of melted tulle scraps. Kobak Distortion, and Rebellion. created this by taking tulle, articulately “As women, we become suffocated by molding the pieces to the mannequin,
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Kobak’s final thesis sketches
all photos courtesy of Emerson Kobak