Inside of Gallery 114 at the Kresge Art Center there is a room filled with mannequins that brought the ideas of students in MSU’s Apparel and Textile Design program to life.
Apparel and textile design senior Sarah Vocke designed two garments, four fashion illustrations and one piece of 2-D artwork. For Vocke, her mannequin modeled a piece of clothing that describes the essence of life, she said.
“My grandma recently got diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and dementia, so this project that was in the gallery had a lot of her old fake flowers she used to work with,” Vocke said.
Vocke said her designs are inspired by what is going on in her family and her social environment.
“The whole concept is about preserving life and where it is now,” Vocke said. “I found artistic galleries that focused on freezing flowers where they were because it is the natural way of life cycles that are supposed to be dying, but they are frozen so they still look beautiful.”
The mannequins are dressed in clothing that includes everything from dresses, flowers, feathers and leather. The Apparel and Textile Design program is a small program with approximately 150 students currently enrolled in it.
“It is kind of an unknown major and it is very underestimated, but we do make some awesome stuff,” Vocke said. “The people that put all this work in put in hours of work. It is always great to get good feedback and get people around campus to realize that we don’t just make and sell but we make 2-D art, very avant garde clothing.”
Apparel and textile design senior Demetrius Few Jr. was among the apparel and textile design students whose work was featured at the exhibit. Few Jr. is originally from Southfield, Mich. He said his family inspired him to pursue fashion.
“My parents have always been interested in fashion,” Few Jr. said. “Especially around the holidays, they always made a big deal about what I would wear and what they would wear. ... My mother went to school for a few years for fashion design.”
He said as a freshman, he never would have expected fashion to be his major.
“I have always been a kind of creative person, doing a lot of artistic things and everything like that,” Few Jr. said. “I never thought fashion would be a career that I would make for myself, but then I started to really get interested when I started thinking about it more and more.”
Few Jr. has two pieces featured in the exhibit. One is a garment and the other is an illustration, both titled “Ceremonial Pt. 2.” He said he is inspired by designers who break the rules and the status quo in fashion.
“I would encourage people to come out because there will be something in there people have never seen before,” Few Jr. said. “They might think they have seen it all, but they’ve never seen things like the people in the show. I guarantee it.”
The exhibit will be open until Dec. 9.
