Fashion’s challenges are many, and in addition to piecing together their school finale collections, the five seniors in the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Fashion Design and Merchandising Program had one more dilemma: The fashion students at Honolulu Community College had come up with the same name for their fashion show, "Juxtapose."
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‘AXIS: POINT OF ORIGIN’
49th University of Hawaii at Manoa senior fashion show
>> Where: Hilton Waikiki Beach Prince Kuhio
Hotel, 2500 Kuhio Ave.
>> When: 6 p.m. Sunday; doors open at 5 p.m.
>> Tickets: $25; $50 VIP tickets available by emailing vonk@hawaii.edu
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That discovery sent the Manoa students scrambling for a new name for their 49th annual senior fashion show. What they came up with is "AXIS: point of origin," referring to the abstract line from which all their creative ideas emanate, around which all their life work revolves. The audience, whether at a fashion show or a boutique, can see only the finished work, but it’s always interesting to hear the roots of the designers’ work.
The show begins at 6 p.m. Sunday at the Hilton Waikiki Beach Prince Kuhio Hotel and will feature individual collections from the five designers as well as a group collection, "Eco Eclecticism," including designs using 100 percent cotton and recycled materials and modern avant-garde pieces incorporating LED lights.
The designers shared a mix of designs from their personal and "Eco Eclecticism" collections:
Asia Joan Mateo
“Jardin de Papillon”
While growing up, Asia Joan Mateo always wanted to be Vera Wang.
“I attended a lot of weddings, and I was always the flower girl wearing the itchy dresses. I was fascinated by the adult dresses and wanted to wear those instead,” she said.
She’s brought her love of flowers, butterflies and bridal fashion together in her ultrafeminine senior collection with a color palette of fuchsia, purple and nude.
Ayaka Hosomi
“Legacy”
Ayaka Hosomi revisits her Japanese heritage through her senior collection, inspired by Japanese textiles.
She grew up with a love of fabric and materials she could manipulate with her hands, and said her work was transformed through a single class in embellishment, which gave her the basics in knitting, crochet and dyeing fabric.
“Everything I learned, I liked, and I wanted to use all the techniques,” she said. The result shows in her group piece, a dress of hand-dyed, sustainable cotton gauze with sculptural, crocheted embellishment.
She said she likes the idea of continuing to work with sustainable or recycled materials. “I think it’s something we all have to do in the future, and it’s our challenge to make it interesting and different.”
Grace Tsubaki-Noguchi
“Mirage”
This year’s senior show marks a second chance for Grace Tsubaki-Noguchi, who had to bow out of the 2013 show due to a family crisis.
She found inspiration in a single cactus given to her by her father before his death in December 2013. “After that the cactus started to die and I got really sad, but after four months it started to revive,” Tsubaki-Noguchi said.
She saw that as a sign to go on with her life, and although she could not finish her original line, she found comfort in the colors of the desert, mixed with metallic and sheer elements, in her current collection of separates and dresses with tiers of color and texture.
“I always liked clean, architectural lines. That hasn’t changed. Only the colors changed.”
Gabrielle Sanehira
“Mod Nouveau”
Originally a student of photography, Gabrielle Sanehira couldn’t deny her attraction to fashion design. She’d gotten a taste of it at Kauai High School, where she was involved with theater and costume design, and came to the attention of school officials when altering her boxy school uniform T-shirt to be more form-fitting.
She now incorporates her eye for detail and photographic materials in her collection, “Mod Nouveau,” comprising minimalist, mod silhouettes with accent panels, collars and edging details of large-format photo sheet negatives bearing her own images of water and nature.
“I had to be careful with it because it didn’t have the same flexibility as fabric,” Sanehira said.
It took some design modifications to work with the stiff film, but gauging from her “Eco Eclectic” group design, an American Spirit dress fashioned from the brand’s cigarette boxes, she loves a puzzle. The sheath dress is pieced with darker prints of the cigarette box forming a graphic pattern.
During her three weeks of working on the dress, she smoked a lot of cigarettes but said the experience was cathartic.
“It was me finally giving up smoking, working through it,” she said. “While I was working on the dress, I kept thinking of all the money it costs to smoke.”
Li King
“Adaptation”
Born and raised in Dalian in northeastern China, it took a move to Hawaii for Li King to discover aspects of Chinese costume lost to a younger generation.
While working with the UH’s Historic Costume Collection, she came across a fabric of 100 percent silk, made with a centuries-old technique of dyeing fabric over the 60 hottest days of summer with mud and taro root that imparts an aromatic smell and a unique crackling effect as the garment is worn and ages. The fabric, “xiang-yun-sha,” translates as “perfumed cloud,” because of its fragrance and airy structure.
“When it creases it forms a black line, like a tortoise shell,” she explained. According to her mentor, associate professor Shu Hwa Lin, examples of these textiles existed in fifth-century China. It became popular with wealthy patrons throughout Southeast Asia and Russia in the 1920s and ’30s.
King’s collection will feature her twists on the “qipao,” the classic Mandarin-collar Chinese dress, as well as menswear comprising silks and reversible apparel utilizing xiang-yun-sha fabric.
By highlighting classic Chinese design, even while making adaptations for today’s wearer, she aims to call attention to some aspects of history being lost.
“I’ve always been fascinated by construction, and so much has changed with the qipao. The original garments had no seam lines at the shoulders. Today they have the seam lines, like Western dress.”
