NC State Seniors Design What’s Next in Fashion, Fiber Art, Home Textiles

For college seniors, the spring semester is full of traditions and rights of passage – from graduation parties to picking up their caps and gowns. Fashion and textile design (FTD) students at the Wilson College of Textiles have a unique addition to that list: the FTD Emerging Designers Showcase, where they launch their industry-caliber capstone collections. 

Students in the fashion design concentration are tasked with developing a cohesive apparel collection for the runway made of six to eight looks. Textile design students create collections for exhibition-style spaces with at least 10 pieces. What they present at the showcase represents hours of work in Wilson College studios and labs throughout their semester-long capstone course.

“It was a very special experience for our cohort to be back in the studio again in our last class,” new fashion design alumna Lilly Barozzini says.

Free to Create

The freedom and breadth of Emerging Designers is what truly sets the class apart from the other studio courses in the FTD curriculum. Designers make the greatest number of pieces in this course, and they have complete creative freedom over the inspiration, target market and type of end products they make. 

This lack of constraints leads to a rich diversity of collections on the runway and in the showroom. Some designers use their collections to build an impressive portfolio for jobs in the ready-to-wear and home textile market. 

Others see the course as a unique opportunity to communicate their artistic vision at a grand scale. 

“I already had a lot of traditional textile design in my portfolio,” textile design graduate Lilly Carl Richards says. “And I thought, ‘When else in my life am I going to be able to create a textile arts collection like this? I might as well do it now.”

No matter which direction they choose to go in, every designer uses their collection as an opportunity to incorporate new techniques and approaches into their portfolio, from French shirring and couture detailing to by-hand textile techniques. 

“I’ve been taking a very much an engineering approach to one of the pieces of my collection, which has been very challenging because I have no background in that,” Chiana Royal says of her fashion collection. “I’ve created these complex support structures. I’ve also just really been experimenting with a lot of different materials I’ve never used before.”

Throughout the process, Emerging Designers Co-Directors Emily Law and Traci Lamar instructors serve as repositories of knowledge as well as built-in mentors. 

“She’s been really helpful with decision making,” fashion design graduate Sydney Brown says about Assistant Professor Emily Law. “When I start getting frazzled by all the options I have in front of me and overwhelmed by all the sketches I’ve made, she’s been so helpful in keeping me on track, keeping me focused and helping me pick the best option.” 

“She definitely offers just a lot of guidance and knowledge,” Richards says of Professor Traci Lamar.

Below, take a closer look at the inspiration and processes behind just a few of this year’s amazing collections.

Inspired by History

Learning How to Fall | Sydney Brown

Sydney Brown’s maximalist, eclectic collection makes a statement about dressing first and foremost for yourself.

“My inspiration for this collection is based around my memories as a kid of wanting to wear these elaborate or funky outfits and then getting worried about what people might say,” she says. “It’s about being able to let go and not reducing the ideas I have for an outfit or a look.”

The collection features strong visual references to the Victorian era and other historical fashions. Brown says her job as an archivist at Raleigh Vintage has helped shape her unique point of view.

“I get to look through a lot of runway shows from anywhere from the late ’70s to early 2000s,” she says. “I’ve gotten to see online and also see in person a lot of really crazy stuff that I didn’t think I’d ever get to see in person and analyze.”

Blind Tiger + Bright Young Things | Cadee Gafford and Sloane Byrd

Fashion designer Sloane Byrd and textile designer Cadee Gafford both took inspiration from the Roaring ’20s for their Emerging Designers collections.

Blind Tiger is Cadee Gafford’s interpretation of a modern speakeasy. Byrd’s collection is named for the nickname given to young, wealthy London socialites in the 1920s.

Divine Opulence | Natalia Barnack

Natalia Barnack’s collection takes inspiration from the motifs, colors and maximalism of Baroque Era art and churches.

“This collection goes beyond mere aesthetics, tapping into the emotive power of sacred art,” she writes in her artist’s statement.

Storytelling through fashion

The Puppeteer’s Workshop | Erika Norris

Erika Norris plays the role of a seamstress working for “an unstable, highly skilled puppeteer” who sets beautiful but forgotten marionettes free in her collection “The Puppeteer’s Workshop.”

She used luxury fabrics, hand sewing and fabric manipulation to show the decayed nature of these artisan toys that have been brought to life. Each model wore strings newly clipped to help the puppet escape and walked the runway with the gate of a marionette.

Tragic Delights | Chiana Royal

Ancient marriage rituals served as the point of departure for Chiana Royal’s collection “Tragic Delights.”

“One that I found that’s been prevalent throughout history in different cultures is that if two people died before they’re able to be wed or a husband died in war and left a widow, then they could be married from beyond the grave,” she says.

This dark expression of everlasting love inspired Royal to create looks representing five characters that have each passed away: a groom, a bride, a priest, a flower girl and a ring bearer.

“I think what I’ve learned most is that kind of embracing things that seem very challenging and very difficult or just like a pipe dream,” she says. “When you push past that fear, you’ll end up doing it and you learn so much from that.”

Fiber Art

Memory Palace | Chase Woodson

Chase Woodson’s senior collection is a commentary on how memories are preserved and distorted through time.

“Over the summer we had the clean up an old storage room that was full of boxes stuff of my grandmother’s and stuff of my dad’s and stuff from my childhood that I’d forgotten about,” she says. “It really just got me thinking about why those items have been stored so carefully and held onto throughout generations. What stories are hidden in these everyday objects that every family has in a box of things that they keep?”

These family artifacts and memories are intended to prompt conversations about memory rather than serving as a visual history, Woodson clarifies.

“The abstraction is an important part of each of the pieces. I think since I’m working with such personal material, I didn’t want it to become so much about the particular stories of my family,” Woodson says. “I wanted to ultimately create pieces that anyone could look at and kind of understand in some way.”

A Family Dinner | Lilly Carl Richards

Lilly Carl Richards also found inspiration in stories of the past and present told around the family dinner table.

She translated that inspiration by developing an entire collection of depictions of old family photos in textiles, from quilting to digital printing, embroidery and photo-realistic Jacquard weaving.

Designed by Milo McKnight

Home Textile Collections