Uncertainty defines the present moment, but SCAD’s Class of 2026 is heading confidently into the future. That’s not to say the students are pollyannaish. A good number of students are using their practices to work through personal trauma; they are not letting grief define them. As Dean of Fashion Dirk Standen put it, “They are clear eyed but also optimistic about the future. What I get from these students is that fashion matters now more than ever.”
The student show, presented in an outdoor space at the SCAD museum in which a colorful, cloud-like textile piece by Janet Echelman was hung, opened with a performance by Lil Buck and Jeremiah Ellis, and featured the work of more than 60 graduating seniors.
In keeping with the expansion of interest and innovation in menswear that we’re seeing in the industry, men’s looks were one of the strengths of the SCAD show. Jimmy Kim worked wonders with gray flannel and Jack Wilkins meticulously distressed, aged, and patched materials into post-Ivy garments. Nicholas Oyakhire’s all-black collection, a study in the stages of grief, included a cutaway tailcoat, while Owen Gibson gave new proportions to archetypes like bombers and pea coats. Shaely Stabler proposed a men’s evening collection that incorporated techniques borrowed from womenswear.
Standen identified “a return to dressing up” as one of the red threads that ran through the collections. On the runway, this culminated in a finale of six evening dresses designed by students who had been mentored by SCAD’s designer in residence, Peter Copping of Lanvin, who had asked them to interpret the house codes. There was, of course, an interpretation of Lanvin’s panniered robe de style, which was originally a 1920s take on an 18th-century style. It’s a silhouette that has been revived over the past two ready-to-wear seasons and appeared in various forms in the student show.
Romance was the guiding principle in other collections. Jinseo Park made pretty pastel looks that are on sale at SCAD’s newly opened store Bazaar, Gabriella Simone Fox, showed dresses of raw-edged chiffon, and Zoya Polivchak conjured a unicorn in her Wonderland collection. More moody takes on the theme came from Jamie Domrude, who used Swarovski crystals to wonderful, subtle effect in her Titanic-inspired lineup, and Jane Jurchak (of whom fka Twigs is already a fan), who showed distressed and grungy garments with a dark Southern Gothic spin.
Among the students doing exciting things with materiality was Mohan Yang, who applied her touch to handmade materials she collected in China, and Luca Bellini, who was inspired by architecture to create sculptural garments. Lily Arnold showed intricate snowwhite knits, while Ruby Yao’s blood red skeleton knit was in tune with the “Costume Art” theme. Many of the graduates used upcycled materials to convey an eco message; the standouts were Brynn Sullivan who applied thousands of stickers to one get-up, and Tabitha Wagner whose sent out charming woodland creatures with bindle sticks and fairy wings made of raggedy, and otherwise polluting, plastic bags.
The sportiest looks to come down the runway were by avid snowboarder Andrea Ibarra who took an interdisciplinary approach to her collection, working with a sound engineer to turn audio captured on the slopes into graphs that were made into prints.
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