ERA
Elizabeth Robinson Ayer
The weeks I spent in Paris during the Summer of 2018 were some of the best weeks of my life, as one could imagine. I was 16, alone, and in the heart of style and elegance, what more could a girl ask for? Thanks to Parsons Paris, I got to see Yves Saint Laurent's studio and learned the many wonders of dressmaking in one of the places the craft was excelerated. On the fourth floor of the school's old campus, I got to drape fabrics and create mood boards from curated inspiration across the infamous city. I cut class only to sneak into Fashion Week, and I stayed behind after my first show to congratulate the designer, Kithe Brewster, myself. He too, was amazed that the design school still held classes during such a monumental season in fashion and I was lucky enough to receive an invitation to tour his very own Parisian atelier a few days later.
That summer, I wore my own designs to class, the Louis Vuitton Flagship store, Versailles, the entrance to Karl Lagerfeld's final Fendi fashion show before his passing, and many more beautiful scenes across Paris. Below are my final garments from the course that earned me a perfect score, photographed by a Parsons photography student and modeled by a Fashion Week model right off the runway. The prompt for the assignment was something along the lines of the theme of Paris. In short, I wrote many of the notable French designer's labels on muslin, the fabric designers use for prototypes before they cut into their real fabric, then cut the muslin into strips and draped the strips around a mannequin to perfection before turning it into a wearable garment. While fashion is made up of countless details in the seams and styles, it is the designers themselves that carry fashion through the times and create magic out of fabric. I wanted to commemorate the designers themselves and their impact on the industry throughout history, so the garment is entirely based upon the designers themselves.
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(I made the black gown in my spare time for further personal enjoyment.)
​Circa 2018