Kate Absher: Fashion showcase
Kate Absher, fourth-year fashion design major from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Photo by Crosby Ignasher.
Written by Amy Stoltenberg
What has been the best part of the experience of the senior collection experience?
I’ve had a really great experience in the mentorship program, working with designer Behnaz Sarafpour. She’s been in New York for 10 years working on her own line, and has been honored by Michelle Obama, and has dressed countless celebrities. She’s met with myself and all the other mentor students about seven times throughout the whole process.
What has been the worst part of the experience?
Oh, I am spoiled for choice there. There’s the standard sleeplessness and the constant changes, and everything coming at you. It can be really confusing when you have a lot of other people’s opinions that you know are valid, but sometimes there’s so many opinions that it can be hard to know what to do.
If your freshman self could see you now, what would she say to you?
I probably would say, “Yeah, of course you should have made it into the show. If you didn’t make it, what have you been doing with your life for the past four years?”
What advice would you give to your freshman self?
Sometimes I wish that I hadn’t started off in production design, because taking those classes ate up a lot of my electives and my time, and I wish I would have filled that space and spent my time on other things.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
I want to be a designer, to have my own line.
What designers inspire you?
The first designer who I came across and really understood their vision was Joseph Altuzarra. But after I started to branch out a little more, I would say that my favorite designer was Haider Ackermann. If I spoke french, I’d move to Paris right now and bother him until he gave me a job.
What is your favorite part of the design process?
The research. I think that all of my best work comes when I have to learn something new. It makes me understand something that I hadn’t understood before, and look at new things that hadn’t been a part of my experience previously.
What is the most important lesson you will take away from the senior collection design process?
The most important lesson that I’ll be taking away is that I need to trust myself more, and that I need to lean most heavily on my own opinion and really follow what it is that I see and what I want to do… I’m really happy with the way that this has all turned out, but I do think that I wasted a lot of time worrying about this various comments and design ideas from other people.
What inspires you as a designer?
The SCAD library is my favorite thing about this school. They have done an amazing job putting that library together with all the resources. I have gone in there looking for one thing and I have come out of there with something else that is 10 times better. My advice to other students is to get in there and look.
I’ll tell you where I don’t look: Tumblr, and social media and picture sites in general, because that’s where everyone looks. It’s boring. You can’t engage in a bunch of other random pictures that don’t really mean anything. To me, that doesn’t have anything to do with being creative.
Do you have any advice for balancing school and a social life?
Honestly, I think you should say “screw it.” My advice is to ditch all of that stupid crap and focus. That’s why I’m in the show. You don’t get this kind of opportunity by having a balanced life. You do it by working your ass off. This is the time and this is the place to just screw everything and everyone else and do exactly what you want to do. All of the resources and opportunities are here, you just have to take them and make them count. I don’t think you should bother with a balanced life right now. Just work really hard and kill it and make it awesome.
What are the biggest issues designers need to tackle in the fashion industry today?
I think that fashion is part of a huge problem that we have in this country—especially with women, but it also applies to men—concerning idealized images. I think it’s absurd that 50-60 percent of our adults are obese, and yet we hold up these waif-like figures as the ideal. The huge gulf between actual reality and this sort of design fantasy can create a lot of negative problems and feelings for people, because it can be very hard not to compare oneself to these hugely idealized and very fake images. I’m not really a fan of Photoshop or of creating this standard that is impossible to attain.
I also think that sustainability in design is a huge problem. I’m in the Business of Fashion class right now, and to me it’s unbelievable to me that it can be cheaper to have something made halfway across the world and then shipped to a distribution center and then shipped to a store, than to have it made here. I don’t think that people realize that when they buy a super cheap item of clothing, there is a terrible cost to a lot of people in between them buying it and the design process.
What type of women do you have in mind when you are designing?
For my senior collection I was designing for the young and sophisticated woman… She is aware of fashion, and looking good is important to her, but she isn’t going to buy something that doesn’t flatter her just to be on trend.
Do you have any plans for after graduation?
Not yet. It’s so scary thinking about what’s going to happen
