Fashion designers don’t usually turn to outer space for inspiration. With its uninhabitable planets, its black holes, its vacuous nothingness, its seems like an unlikely reference point for someone creating outfits. This, however, wasn’t the case for local designer Leah Evans who, at the age of 23, crafted an entire line inspired by the celestial unknown.
Her collection, Earth Girls Have More Fun, premiered at Urban Pacific, a fashion event for burgeoning local designers hosted by Chinatown hot spot Next Door. Combining synthetic fabrics such as metallic lamè, patent vinyl and holographic spandex, Leah created an ethereal line for the interplanetary it girl.
“I wanted to make a fun futuristic line,” Leah says, “and I thought if there were girls on Venus or Jupiter going out for a night on the town, the Earth girls would be dressed better and would have way more fun than them!” Her fashion show was an astronomical hit, and her outfits, fit for spaceship soirées, have been featured in the Honolulu Advertiser, Smart Magazine, and DISfunkshion Magazine, among many others.
Unlike scores of fashion icons whose entire lives have been consumed by Singer sewing machines, Leah’s career as a designer seems to have materialized overnight. It all began, Leah says, with an intermediate fiber arts class at UH Manoa: “everything I was making in that class turned out to be wearable” Leah admits, “so I finally declared Apparel Product Design and Merchandising as my major.”
The first piece Leah created had the same playful whimsicality as her Earth Girls Have More Fun line. “It was a suspender dress with a long hemline” Leah recalls, “but was meant to be folded up to the hip area to form one big pocket, with hidden pockets within that pocket for my Moleskine book, a pen, and my cell phone.” Indeed, Leah’s creative brain was already at work, and mentioning this garment brings a smile to her face. “When I think of that dress, I get inspired all over again.”
So who inspires Leah Evans? The names Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Jeremy Scott, Christian Joy (for whom Evans is currently interning in New York), and Alexandre Herchcovitch quickly come to mind. “They are nuts,” she says. “I love nuts designers.”
Leah’s clothing may be inspired by these other-worldly designers, but her down-to-earth nature keeps her designing for women like herself. “I basically design for me,” Leah says, “and if other people like it, then that makes my day.”
Leah Evans apparel can be found at Queens Hawaii located in Kakaako and Brown Bear in San Francisco. For more information, visit her online at her myspace page, and soon at her eponymous website.
0 comments:
Post a Comment