March 8, 2013 T h e P h i l l i p i a n ARTS & LEISURE | B1

Victoria Skrivanos // Photos by Emmie Avvakumova

“Dusk” by Sophiya Chiang ’14

“My line is called ‘Dusk’ be-cause I drew inspiration from that beautiful transition from day to night. Basically my line was a play between different contrasts,” said Chiang.

Chiang’s favorite of her two designs was a dress modeled by Ali Hill ’15. Two layers of white and beige fabric net and a thin line of gold fabric dan-gling from the sides added a feel of elegance.

“No Sleep” by DJ Bierwirth ’14

Getting out of the box of conventional student fash-ion design, Bierwirth used everyday household items to create original dresses. Using old issues of The Phillipian, Bierwirth created two dresses with simple bodices attached to tutu-like skirts made up of rolled up newspapers secured with checkered duct tape. Bierwerth designed a third dress using post-it notes.

“Greek Life” by Liz Rao ’14

Rao’s designs for her third WQN fashion show show-cased a dress of sheer gauze and a plaid tank top with black leggings. Katherine Tobeason ’14 and Ali Decker ’14 modeled two of her pieces.

Rao’s favorite piece was a black dress made from a gold ribbon belt and an old tank dress, modeled by Emily Ew-ing ’14. According to Rao, it took her over two days to fin-ish the designs.

“Paper Innuendos” by Alex Donovan ’13

Donovan’s paper-based line consisted of a winter dress, modeled by Andrea Vargas ’13, and a spring dress with crepe paper flower shoul-ders.

“For the spring dress, I used newsprint for the body of the dress, crumpled first to give it texture. I made about 12 different flowers out of tis-sue paper and arranged them near the neckline,” said Don-ovan.

“Safari” by Caitlin Clancy ’13

Using safari-inspired patterns and cloths, Clancy designed a strapless top decorated with patterns of ferns paired with a black wrap skirt.

“I really enjoyed designing this year because it gave me the chance to try something I’ve never done before. My models were up for anything! I used fabrics found at thrift stores,” said Clancy.

“Sink or Swim” by Alex Westfall ’15 and

Charlotte Berry ’15Westfall and Berry created

a fashion line inspired by the organic flow of water. West-fall designed a long maxi skirt made of blue-hued fabric cloth strips, while Berry designed a blue empire waist high-low dress covered in sea-colored scales. The skirts trailed, creat-ing the illusion that waves were at their tail.

“Accra” by Eden Livingston ’15 and

Caroline Lu ’15Livingston and Lu’s line in-

cluded five neon shirts that were shredded into different designs, paired with black leg-gings and sky-high stilettos. For the finishing touches, they sprayed their models hair and painted their faces with neon color. The inspiration for one of the shirts came from a Kris-tina Debarge music video, said Livingston.

“Flight” by Zoe Gallagher ’14

Evie Elson ’15 strutted down the runway dressed in Galla-gher’s only piece in the fashion show: an elegant black mini dress with a plunging neckline adorned with black, brown and white feathers. Gallagher approached the design process with the trial and error method and used any materials that she came across.

“Cut it Out” by Abby Chung ’13 and

Rhea Lewis ’13Inspired by the cutout cloth-

ing trend last spring, Lewis and Chung’s line contained different types of geometric cutouts. Lewis’s favorite piece are leggings with provocative triangles cut down the legs. Chung and Lewis decided to add a twist to this piece by us-ing chains instead of regular fabric as the dress’ back straps.

“Viv by Viv Garth” by Viv Garth ’15

Garth’s designs incorporat-ed soft pastel tones reminis-cent of spring. A highlight was the apricot and white lace cocktail dress.

“For me, it wasn’t so much the design aspect, but rather the construction of the gar-ments. I really wanted my clothes to be durable, wear-able, practical, and cute,” said Garth.

“DJYK” by Dan Kim ’14

The final piece of Kim’s line was a pair of t-shirts linked at the back by E&R clothes hangers intended to represent the friendship of models Pearson Goodman ’13 and Brendan O’Connell ’13. “If you observe carefully, you can see that on [O’Con-nell’s] back there is the out-line of a fish, but it gradually gains ‘flesh’ or substance onto [Goodman’s] shoulder,” said Kim.

“Back to Black” by Gina Sawaya ’13

Sawaya used hot glue to craft a dress of aluminum foil and counterbalanced the visual boldness of the foil by crafting the rest of the dress in plain, sheer black fabric. “[My inspiration] also came from working at a historical society this past summer, so I got to look at the old dress-es in there,” said Sawaya.

“Fridelity“ by Mimi Leggett ’13

Inspired by Frida Kahlo’s style, Leggett paired crop tops and skirts in black and white patterns topped off with floral headdresses by Emmie Avvakumova ’14.

“I also observed a lot of different styles of dress last year during my time at SYA [School Year Abroad] Spain. I love making crazy pat-terns combined with black and white, the general color scheme,” said Leggett.

“Lxcuinan“by Graham Johns ’14

John’s dress consisted of a gray snakeskin fitted top and a mid-thigh navy skirt with an electric green zipper on the back as a finishing touch.

“I decided to make a short-er dress that was more wear-able, but wanted to make a garment that was still very grounded. That’s why I choose to use the snake-skin,” said John. “It gave the dress a more earthy look that I really liked.”

“Achro-Twist” by Cathy Liu ’15, Nicole

Navarrete ’15 and Alyssa Augustin ’15.

A white top made out of a shiny white fabric and white duct tape, laced in the back with colored ribbons to look like a corset, was the highlight of this futuristic line.

“The original vision was to make something really edgy and futuristic looking. The interesting combination of materials and the starkly con-trasting colors worked well to attain this goal,” said Liu.

“Culture Shock” by Bella Flynn ’15

Inspired by 1950s fashion in Asia, Flynn added an East-meets-West feel to her ethnic clothing line “Culture Shock.” Flynn said that her favorite design was the red and white Chinese qipao-inspired dress, which she also modeled. She topped off all of her designs by asking the models to hold colorful parasols as they walked the runway.

WEST QUAD NORTH FASHION SHOW 2013

Over a dozen student models clothed in avant-garde, student-designed piec-es walked the runway in the annual West Quad North (WQN) Fashion Show this past Friday in Kemper Auditorium.

Abby Chung ’13, coordinator, Emmie Avvakumova ’14 and Graham Johns ’14, as-sistant coordinators, organized this year’s fashion show. The show was enlivened by the performance of the Yorkies, Andover’s all-male a cappella group.

The WQN Cluster Council will donate ticket-sale profits to Wings and Hooves Therapeutic Riding, Inc., a program in East Kingston, NH, that offers therapeu-tic horseback riding to children and adults with developmental challenges.

“Providing an outlet for creativity of this type is more important than having many other types of events, because it ca-ters to the people who may indeed pursue a career in the multi-billion dollar fash-ion industry. On a fundamental level, the show differs from many others in that the amount of student work and creativity is unmatched,” said Johns.