Each year, Oakland School for the Arts puts on a fashion show in which all the participating designers get a theme. The theme in 2017 was artists and I chose Jean-Michel Basquiat. There is something about his sporadic brush stroke, use of color, and layering that interested me. I reflected these into my designs in many ways. I interpreted the brushstroke as frayed denim. I did this because I felt as if the frayed denim and Basquiat’s brushstroke evoked a feeling of chaos. You can see this in the denim corset I constructed and in the pants. He also used a lot of vibrants colors, but I stuck with reds, oranges and blues. Another aspect of his art that I was inspired by was his use of layering, one of Basquiat’s techniques was to paint a word and cross it out. I used this idea and crossed out pieces of the garments by layering them. The techniques used in Basquiat’s paintings influenced my design process.
Thank you to my beautiful models and makeup artist!
Models: August Stevens, Mayra Aguilar, AnnaSara Mehouelley
MUA: Nevaeh Trevino
May 2017
NGin 