Using one’s imagination and fashion knowledge to make beautiful masterpieces. Photo collage courtesy of Fashion and Interior Design Class and senior Samantha Gomez.
San Luis Obispo High School not only allows students to discover their favorite passions, but can help channel those passions into jobs that can sustain them financially, in addition to being fulfilling.
The Fashion and Interior Merchandising Class is a two trimester long elective where students can independently create their own fashion lines to their hearts desire. Once finished with a project they discuss and gain feedback about their amazing pieces.
“I want to wear the clothes I want to put out into the world, and then probably ones where we’re talking about our brand and hearing about our friends’ brands, that’s really fun, and it’s like a way to know your classmates a little better,” said junior Pluto Rios.
But the ability to invent new things in class goes beyond the students just checking off a box for a grade, it comes from support outside of the classroom.
At the beginning of the A section of this elective, SLOHS contributes a small donation within its budget to fund materials to jumpstart the design ideas. At the end of the two trimesters of the Fashion and Interior Merchandising class, a group of community business owners come down and give feedback on the students’ final projects in order to help them succeed by themselves in the future.
Just like anything else, most opportunities or possibilities have their upsides and downsides.
“What makes this class challenging for me is understanding that it’s not going to be perfect the first time, I don’t have a background in sewing so when I first started sewing it was difficult,” said senior Maile Roldan.
Some other challenges go beyond the students and Leone’s power. The time limit being only two trimesters to create many pieces.
“It’s the trimester I’m getting juniors and seniors to have enough room in their schedule to actually take two classes back to back. They can break it over two years, so they could take it A and then B. It doesn’t work as well, though. It’s better if you’re just really here for the whole time. So right now, I think there’s 13 that will finish the pathway this year. I really wish it was more. I feel like a lot of it really is a scheduling issue with that trimester,” said fashion teacher Avery Leone.
The things that have already been discussed are the types of assignments, the favorite parts of the class, the challenges, as well as the support outside of school. But what is the overall opinion of the class itself?
“I think it’s a really good opportunity. It’s mostly a chill class, but also there’s a lot of interesting things you can do with it, and interesting directions you can take. You can use your imagination as [there is no] limit to what you can do in class, and I think that’s a very important thing,” said senior Lucy Field.
Each Fashion and Interior Design class sewed their pattern. Now it is up to the people of SLOHS to see if this type of style fits their design tastes.
