Two and a half hours after Alexandra M. Hays ’’09 is given 24 dollars and 24 hours to construct an outfit for FM’s fashion challenge, she is poking through the sea of $1.50 a pound clothing the Garment District.
Hays is on a mission to find something “black and silky,” which she plans to transform into a dress with a collage of Drew Faust’s face on the back. She collects items haphazardly, but balks when she realizes that the clothes weigh more than 20 pounds. Ex-nay on the ironic collage.
Hays eventually leaves with an assortment of black clothing and a large white teddy bear. She intends to cut off its feet and use them to elevate the shoulders of the dress.
“It’s the idea of ‘metropolis’ being a Greek paradigm—I’m making Grecian-inspired clothing with rigidly structured aspects to echo urban form,” she says. The bear smiles glassily, ignorant that it will be sacrificed in the pursuit of fashion.
The next morning, with less than four hours to go before the noon deadline, Hays sits calmly in Quincy dining hall. Her outfit is still two-dimensional—no more than a couple of rough sketches—but she is unconcerned. There is not a word on how she will manage to finish the outfit, considering that she has two hours of class in the morning.
It is 11 a.m. when Hays begins translating her idea into fabric. Her sewing machine buzzes noisily as Hays sews new life into the black clothing that she ripped apart at the seams. Something catches her eye—a plush sofa the size of a box of tissues. She holds it up to the back of her head, adjusting it so that it becomes a kind of bonnet. By the end of the hour she has finished sewing the rectangle of fabric that will become a thick, ruff-like collar that supports the back of the model’s neck.
At 5 p.m., Hays sets down her partially-finished pieces and breaks out the lint roller. A layer of white dust, the remnants of the sacrificial teddy bear, covers everything in the room. The design must be clean so it can be fitted to the model, who is soon to arrive.
Hays and her model arrive at the Sanctum in the nick of time, the latter looking like an alien from the Elizabethan era.
The result is beautiful.
