Within the basement of LaFollette in a small, make-do fashion studio mannequins line the walls wearing the custom pieces created by fashion majors.
Senior Arlee Post sits in the studio surrounded by sketches, fabrics and the sewing materials she is using on her current collection.
Post played dress up as a young girl and fell in love with fashion. She received her first sewing machine in middle school.
“[It] helped me realize that designing clothes was what I dreamt of doing,” Post said.
She continued learning how to create clothes in high school and chose Ball State for its fashion program. Her personal style has developed within these years into the girly side of edge: a refined edgy. She loves utility jackets, Dr. Martens and ripped jeans.
In her three years at Ball State, she has created an abundance of dresses, skirts and tops.
During her junior year, Post created a coat that was featured in an end-of-the-semester fashion show. The composite show takes place in the spring and fall and showcases all the design majors’ final collections. She handmade the coat in her tailoring class.
“I feel like my hard work paid off in the end and it is still one of [my] favorite things I have ever created,” she said.
In her studio class, she was assigned to create a collection of three to four articles of clothing she could wear.
So far she has created one dress. She explained that with each person’s project a story is created, and a universal theme is formed throughout the collections.
The dress is long sleeve with a boxy shape and drop waist. Post said she wants to go for a high-end look.
“My inspiration was very twilight woods. I wanted to go for a kind of dreamy, yet dark type feel,” Post said. “I created a wanderer of the woods theme.”
In the collection she used metallic, green and blue hues. The designs are made for fall and winter seasons. They are short dresses that can be worn with leather pants or leggings: a trend that is popular within the fashion industry currently.
She plans to finish this collection by the end of this semester when she will showcase the line in a fashion show.
With one semester left of college, Post has started to think about her career path. Last summer she interned for a company in California called Velvet and got a glimpse of the fashion industry.
“I plan on traveling to New York or Los Angeles and finding opportunities there,” Post said. “We will see where it takes me.”
