All Star Archives Presents: Call A Friend

All Star Archives was created by Isabella Jeturian & Mikee De Villa.

They focus on selling thrifted vintage clothing primarily though their website and Instagram page. With their online business, they contribute to the push for sustainability and ethical consumerism in the fashion industry. For their first runway show, they selected various local fashion designers and reworkers to give thrifted clothes new life.

October marks exactly 3 years since I’ve shown my designs on a runway. What’s crazy to me is that the venue “Call A Friend” was held at was down the street where my very last show took place in 2017—it felt like such a full-circle moment for me because I am definitely not the same person and designer I was 3 years ago.

Chaotic is the best word to describe 2020, but focusing on fashion design and creating content has been a huge help to keeping me somewhat sane. When Issa contacted me to participate in this show, I was all in and excited to finally make a small come back and showcase my work.

THE INSPIRATION & DESIGN PROCESS:

Issa was in charge of thrifting my materials to work with, so she went with choosing 9 different pairs of neutral colored pants. One of our favorite designers is Jacquemus, so she chose similar tones to his previous collection and told me to do whatever I wanted with it. I ended up creating 4 designs and altered one pair of cargos to form 3 different looks. My goal was to end up with unique, cohesive pieces that balance each other out.

While working on my online classes and other projects, formulating and tweaking the final design took almost a month, along with a week of sewing everything together. In the beginning stages of designing the garments, I created a Pinterest board, wrote out all the details that I wanted to incorporate into my looks, and which pants stood out to me the most. Issa chose a great variety of color and texture so I tried my best to use as many pairs as I can. My favorite thrifted pair would have to be the striped linen pants that I used to create the jacket Marin wore. As you can see in the photos below, the jacket went through different phases before the final product.

I usually like to keep my designs hemmed and clean (unless the design calls for a distressed look), but to line up with the “reworked” aesthetic, I left raw hemlines where I thought it looked good.

Fun fact: I cut out 75 strips of fabric specifically for the skirt and top and ended up using around 60 of them.

After all the shoots and small runways I’ve done over the years, I’ve grown to be comfortable and in control behind the scenes and watching everything unfold in front of me; however, this was the first time I walked for my own designs! It was definitely a whole different experience, but there’s nothing wrong with trying something new!

Thank you to my beautiful models Marin & Ivana for making my designs come to life <3

Thank you to everyone who has followed my design journey over the years

…or if you just followed me yesterday, I appreciate your support and welcome to my life!

At this event, I was able to connect with so many talented individuals and work with people I’ve known and followed for years on social media. There’s always timing for everything and you truly never know who you’ll encounter in the future. What I loved the most was how genuine everyone was throughout the night. Every person I spoke to had such passion in their craft whether it be through fashion, music, or event planning—the vibe felt like we all truly want each other to succeed in this industry and staying connected is key.

Again, thank you to the All Star Archive team (Issa & Mikee) for 1) promoting sustainability in the fashion industry and 2) providing a comfortable platform for creatives to showcase what they have to offer to the world.

xoxo, Ysa