Kitiya Phongsuwan isn’t counting down to the end. She’s counting down to the beginning.

While her friends see the end of their college tenure as a time to tie up loose ends and finish their academic careers, Phongsuwan said she is only ramping up for the biggest moment in her life. It’s a moment that might determine the rest of her life.

But she wouldn’t have it any other way.

‘It’s very stressful, it’s nerve-racking and it’s taking over my life, as it should be,’ she said. ‘It’s also exciting.’

Phongsuwan, a senior fashion design major, is in the middle of her final assignment as a design student before she graduates: the senior fashion show, taking place in April.

Every year the Collegeof Visualand Performing Arts holds a fashion show with the help of the Fashion Association of Design Students, during which senior students present their collections.

The fashion show is a capstone project that utilizes techniques and skills learned in the past three years, said Todd Conover, an assistant professor of fashion design, in an e-mail interview. Employing illustration, patternmaking and draping, the seniors’ collections are the building blocks of the design industry, he said.

Phongsuwan, also the vice president of the design association, a student group composed of design students who organize fashion-focused events, is already brainstorming the details of her collection.

‘Many of the students are looking out for models around campus,’ she said. ‘It’s really exciting.’

Phongsuwan stressed the difficulties involved with preplanning a collection, and hers is still in its early stages. It is still too soon to tell what her final design will look like, she said.

The first semester of senior year for a fashion design senior is broken up into three separate sections. The students are given three different themes and are required to create one different collection for each theme.

‘The first theme was sculpture — all black,’ Phongsuwan said. ‘We had to pick a certain sculpture and design off that, but all we could use was black.’

All fashion design seniors are now working on the second theme, based on movement. The theme will last until Nov. 8. The final, which is still undetermined, ends during finals week.

The seniors start each collection by designing 100 sketches. Those sketches are then narrowed down to 25 designs. By the end of the semester, each student will have three collections of 25 pieces each. Of the three collections, students are asked to pick six pieces from one collection so that they have time next semester to develop the six looks, Phongsuwan said.

Conover said this year’s themes were chosen with a specific purpose.

‘Fashion is an ever-evolving animal,’ he said.’This year the parameters of inspiration developed for the capstone projects are current in the world of fashion subconscious.’

Though every student must design off of the same theme, so far each student has made his or her collection unique.

Hannah Slocum, a senior fashion design major, said each student has a very different vision, and collections look nothing alike.

‘Although they give us a theme, where we go with that is free for us to decide,’ Slocum said. ‘You think that would be very constricting, but every single collection came out very different.’

Just like every other student, Slocum said her personal tastes were reflected in her styles.

‘I am very into geometric symmetry, lines and form,’ she says. ‘For me it’s all about lines — very modern.’

Like every other year, the fashion show will not announce a winner. However, several students’ designs and collections will be presented in a professional fashion show in New York Cityduring the summer. A selected jury will choose which collections will hit the runway.

‘A handful of us get to go, but not all of us,’ she said. ‘It is a real fashion show, with real models, real-world makeup artists.’

Conover said this year’s competition will be stiff and the talent among the students is amazing.

‘This year’s group of young designers has a collective and sophisticated sensibility,’ he said.

The New York City-based fashion show is organized to expose the students to employers all over the city — a large part of the country’s fashion industry.

‘It is a way for us to bring our designs to potential employers in NYC,’ Phongsuwan said. ‘Who wants to travel all the way to Syracusefor a fashion show?’

For Phongsuwan, the fashion show is her first shot to land a job.

‘A collection is pretty much what I have been working for the last four years. It is all my hard work. It is my first big collection as a designer,’ she said. ‘This is what businesses, companies and potential employers are going to look at.’

Slocum, who is the president of FADS and the fashion editor for SU’s Zipped magazine, said the opportunity to show her designs at the New York Cityfashion show would be the biggest accomplishment in her life.

‘It is a very scary and a very long process,’ she said. ‘I’ve pretty much waited my entire school career to get to this point, and it’s crazy that it’s here already.’

mgegkolf@syr.edu

Published on October 25, 2010 at 12:00 pm