A sold-out fashion show at the BYU Museum of Art showcases FHSS student designs, a year in the making.
Lights dimmed and colors flashed along the walls of the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University. Backstage, students Lori Adrian, Megan Williams, and Divinity Evans donned their original clothing designs as they buzzed with anticipation.
The museum completely sold out its first ever fashion show on November 14. Conceived of by museum educator Liz Brailsford, the show is meant to enhance “The Sense of Beauty” exhibit on loan from the Museo de Arte de Ponce — a renowned American art museum in Puerto Rico. The BYU Museum of Art is one of only five locations in the United States to host the exhibit.
Brailsford created the fashion show to help patrons approach the art from new and refreshing perspectives. “Beauty can be found in various forms,” she says. “It can be found in paintings, but it can also be found in fashion.”
She worked with Amber Williams, professor in the School of Family Life, and Jennine Hollingshaus, faculty in the Department of Theatre and Media Arts, to find and mentor student fashion designers, including hair and makeup artists, to create the content.
For her role, Williams completely overhauled her intermediate sewing course to a project-focused curriculum. Students enrolled in the class having no idea of the challenges that they would face during the semester.
Lori Adrian, a student majoring in family and consumer sciences education in the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences, was filled with both disbelief and excitement when she learned what would be asked of the students in the course.
“They wouldn’t ask us to do that. We’re not that good, are we?” Adrian recalled thinking.
Yet, the process of creating their original garments would show that they were more capable than they initially thought.
To inspire their designs, Adrian and her class were taken into the museum to observe the different pieces of art in the exhibit, using a technique called, “slow looking”, which according to Brailsford is seeking to “uncover what an artwork has to offer.”
The designers—namely Adrian and her classmates Megan Williams and Divinity Evans— were faced with many unique challenges.
For Adrian, finding time to accomplish her vision was difficult. She spent countless hours in the sewing lab — often until it closed each day — in order to complete her garment.
“A lot of it was trying to get the time to do it. Because I had this vision I wanted to do... but I just didn’t want to simplify,” Adrian says.
All that time in the sewing lab taught her to prioritize her valuable time, and helped expand both her sewing skills and confidence. Hours upon hours of gathering donated clothing, piecing it together into an actual workable piece of fabric, and after-hours sewing turned into a beautiful, hooded dress made of patches of blue fabric of varying hues.
Facing similar difficulties, Megan Williams — a family and consumer sciences education major — noted how difficult it was to not directly copy the dress in the painting she focused on, which featured a portrait of a woman in a black dress with a carnation around her neck. She spent a lot of time talking to mentors to discuss her ideas and receive critiques.
“I had to take some creative U-turns,” she says. Finding that creativity was difficult. But instead of copying the painting, she sought to bring out the personality of the subject by adding a jeweled heart necklace to her design and sheer sleeves over constricted leather straps, evoking a sense of her personality peeking through, while also restricted.
Psychology major Divinity Evans also experienced the stretch of managing schoolwork and a design that was, “a little bigger than I initially realized it would be.” She found herself needing to reach out to others to complete the project, something she feels she’s not always the best at doing.
The night of the fashion show came, and each designer’s garment was showcased on models strutting the spotlighted runway in the center of the museum. Fabrics fluttered as designers twirled and hoods came down to reveal elaborate hair and makeup.
Professor Williams expressed her joy and pride in her students as she reflected on the overall experience.
“I literally watched their confidence grow... as we’ve prepared for the actual show,” she said.
“It’s just indescribable,” Evans said as she smiled about the experience.
Megan Williams agrees with the sentiment, saying that the entire experience was exhilarating.
“It felt like a moment where I could...be more brave and out of my comfort zone — like I grew up a little bit,” she says.
Watching the designers grow and overcome challenges, Professor Williams came to her personal conclusion on what the sense of beauty really is, “A sense of beauty is owning who you are and using those gifts and those traits to help others see the beauty in things as well.”
Experience the BYU MOA fashion show for yourself here.
