FITS x SFC dig deep with ‘Roots’ showcase at Chumash
The same song loops, overlaying a mixture between the realm of jazz and something electronic. Sunday May 18 was a time marker for fashion junkies and designers alike; an unrecognizable Chumash Auditorium was transformed into something of Met Gala proportions. Wooden holds with diamonds and incandescent beads hung off the sides of cross-like formations. Spiraled chairs intertwined in an organic shape with an aisle-like path for models to trudge through.
With a late start, a sense of expectancy filled the room — seats were oversold and overfilling. Guided by ushers, onlookers took their seats and leafed through pamphlets, most eventually tapping their feet to the painfully pleasant jingle, as if the room were in an elevator awaiting the top floor.
I’m seated next to a curly-haired brunette with colorful striped socks and a brocade vest. Sadia May-Woodruff, a landscape architecture fifth-year, palmed an elfin bouquet of dried flowers for her partner, Karina Xi-mei Li, an upcoming model in the roots-themed FITS x SFC fashion show. May-Woodruff shares the essentiality of events like these, remarking, “People get to show their creativity in other ways than the baseline, as well as show off their side outlet — it’s neat!”
As a majority agriculture and engineering-based school, side hobbies and fashion presentation are a forgotten mix at Cal Poly and often an unsung curve when it comes to expressing sewn art and the like. But spearheading clubs, Sustainable Fashion and FITS: Fashion, Innovation, Trendsetting and Styling, provided exactly that: a space for overworked and underrepresented designers. Tonight, on the top floor, fashion was the main event.
But every elevator has a basement, too. “Below” — or backstage — an hour prior, in the entourage of hushed voices, stuck zippers and “one more time” walkthroughs, a smiley Ellie Feistel in “indie-fied” business casual laments the chaotic beauty of the Roots show.
A member of the Sustainable Fashion Club since her first year at Cal Poly, Feistel’s “roots” were inspired by her time abroad traveling around Europe — particularly by a painting called “The Execution of Lady Jane Grey” by French painter, Paul Delaroche. For Feistel, fashion design is a 3D medium like clay, but one that sculpts fabric for a person.
“It’s like giving you a voice and you’re getting to put something together that involves what you feel, and other people are going to look at it.”
Feistel has been sewing for ages but never before had the chance to show off her pieces until the past two FITS x SFC shows. She feels strongly about opposing the system of fast fashion, like corporate consumption and consumerism, challenging them with unusual found or thrifted materials.
“This was a way for me to get to be involved in something that’s fashion-art related that I love. I think it’s kind of saying you can make something within that isn’t bought and we don’t have to be a part of the cycle, but we can still create something beautiful.”
In a similar fashion (ha), design partners Avery Loll and Tin Van feel ROOTS FITS x SFC fashion show is an outlet for Cal Poly students who otherwise wouldn’t have a place to practice their craft, or, in that medium, show it off.
Loll says, looking at Van, “It’s just another outlet — you know, Tin, my co-designer, is in electrical engineering. He wouldn’t really have an outlet like this at all if he wasn’t designing outside for the fashion show.”
As a third-year architecture student herself, Loll doesn’t possess the same creative freedoms (at least not in the same way) when architectural design is met with much restriction, but when putting on a fashion show? Roots is another story.
“I think it’s great that so many people can use this to showcase another side of their skills, or like, another aspect of themselves. Sometimes, while you’re in school, you don’t feel amazed. It just feels so amazing that we’re doing this, and I don’t really get that feeling out of school sometimes.”
Behind a masked and hatted trio of medieval and dark-aged figures (her models), a hennin-wearing Loll runs a hand over her metal masks: 25,000 hand-attached chainmail links, involving an entire day of skipping class just to secure each one.
For the designer duo, Roots is exactly that: the roots of our past — history.
“Roots is the beginning of ever-changing life, connecting all backgrounds,” said production designer Kathleen Nguyen.
Quite literally, roots were dismembered across the floor in papier-mâché flooms, as well as figuratively backstage in the looks of hardworking designers and models. A comprehensive amalgamation of designers’ personal and literal takes on the word — complete physically with roots billowing off the necks of backless dresses, historically with Victorian-age silhouettes, 16th-century princess hats and sheaths with swords and masks of chain-mailed armor, and nostalgically in flip-sequin dresses.
FITS x SFC ROOTS was not only a validating showroom for artists and their models but a rare space for student designers to present their unapologetic craftsmanship and dedication to design — in a college where fashion doesn’t always succumb to the structure of major.
