This week, the fashion classroom at the Cleveland School of the Arts (CSA) was filled with students intently focused on getting runway-ready.
They’ve been working for months toward the show, which caps off the week-long “Festival of New Works” at the arts-focused school. The show is tonight, May 15, at 7 p.m. at CSA. No tickets are required.
Students are responsible for designing three to five different outfits, and they’ve been working on their “looks” for weeks — sketching, taking measurements, cutting patterns and sewing for hours. They also organized auditions to cast their friends and peers as models in the show.
A few days out from the runway, Signal Cleveland visited the class to hear from some students about what inspired their designs and how they use fashion to express themselves.
A full circle moment for a teacher: Tiffany Carpenter
A couple days before the final fashion show of the year, the fashion classroom bustles with students cutting fabric, hemming skirts and pinning corsets. Tiffany Carpenter is right there alongside them.
Carpenter, an artist in residence at CSA and the school’s fashion teacher, deliberately goes from student to student demonstrating a pleat here and a backstitch there. Along the way, she offers up words of praise and subtle pieces of advice to help students prioritize and make sure their intricate looks end up on the runway.
She wants her students not just to finish but to create something that they are genuinely proud of — and that’s evident in how she moves through the classroom offering up tweaks and adjustments as she goes. It’s also evident in the enthusiasm each of her students has for their designs.
Carpenter, like her students, has been sewing and designing clothes since she was a teenager. She attended Newton D. Baker, a now closed, arts-focused CMSD school, as a kid and auditioned for CSA but was waitlisted. It feels good to be at the school, she said.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt that kind of gratification from other styles that I taught,” Carpenter said. “To be able to help someone identify and kind of refine what it is they’re learning about themselves and be able to put it out … it’s been overwhelming, but it’s been really, really, really dope.”
Regency with a ‘touch of darkness’: Isabella Cruz
When it came time to consider a major sophomore year, Isabella Cruz wasn’t so sure about fashion — she didn’t know how to sew — but a friend of hers encouraged her to try the class anyway. It was the right choice. Cruz adores her teacher and the class and is now a senior preparing for her third, and final, fashion show.
“That’s kind of how I found, like, my art form,” she said. Students at the arts focused school each “major” in a specific kind of art whether that’s fashion design, creative writing, theater or fine arts.
Her inspiration for the show was the British Regency era. She mainly used light floral fabrics but added details, like lacing and textured fabrics, that in her words give each of the looks “a touch of darkness.”
Over the years she has developed her sewing skills, and this week she’s mainly focused on small finishing touches, like adding the boning to a textured golden corset. It’s a contrast from last year, when she pulled an all-nighter to finish up the skirts of multiple ball gowns.
Crystals for inspiration: Avieana Faulks Williams
Not only did Avieana Faulks Williams design and sew five different looks. She has also chosen to walk in the show to model one of the pieces she’s designed: a deep red corset with intricate lacing paired with flowing red, burnt orange and black pants. It was inspired by the different shades of garnet stones.
Faulks Williams is a very spiritual person and based each of her five different fashion pieces on different crystals. There’s a pink gown with swooping pleats that takes inspiration from the jagged formations of rose quartz and a deep green fabric she chose for it’s resemblance to malachite. She’s also going to make jewelry for each of her looks that will include a piece of the crystal that inspired it.
Like Cruz, Faulks Williams is a senior, so this will be her final fashion show. She’s not planning on a career in the fashion industry but wants to continue sewing for a long time.
“It’s definitely something I’m still going to continue to do because I like to make my own clothes,” she said. “I feel like it’s such a good hobby.”
