Meriweather H. Burruss ’11 is on a tight schedule. Not only does she have a french test, ski team practice, and dinner plans with her dad, but she is also part of FM’s Fast Fashion Challenge.
Her many other commitments for the day leave her with only one and a half hours to buy her materials and make some serious progress on her Bill Gates (initially class of 1977, although subsequent drop-out) inspired design. She is enthusiastically tearing apart the seams of a large men’s oxford shirt when I meet her in front of Boylston Hall.
We walk to Micro Center in the hopes that Burruss will find a few Gates-worthy embellishments to add to the halter dress she plans to fashion out of the $10 button-down shirt. With only $14 left to spend, she must be selective in choosing her materials. After some deliberation, she finally settles on a blue ether-cord cable and a RJ 45 modulator—whatever that is.
On the way back to campus, Burruss opens up about her past as a designer. “My grandma sewed a lot and my mom sewed her own maternity wardrobe. She is the one who taught me how to work the sewing machine,” she says. Burruss is modest about her own status as a designer, saying that she designs and constructs clothes simply out of a love for constructing. She does make occasional sketches, but most of her ideas are stored right in her own mind. “I’m not too good at the two-dimensional stuff. I’m good at the sewing.”
Burruss’s sewing skills seem to be paying off in more ways than one. As we are sitting in a garden chatting, a woman in a chair across the pathway calls out to Burruss. “Excuse me!” she says. “I don’t mean to eavesdrop but I overheard your conversation. Do you think you could teach my daughter to sew?” The bold and sharp-eared woman explains that her daughter is a sophomore at Harvard and that she has been on the hunt for someone to give her sewing lessons. The characteristically humble Burruss laughs, but agrees to give the woman her contact information.
While Burruss’ wardrobe choice of DHAs does not match what one might imagine would be the stereotypical ensemble of a designer, it’s clear from her work ethic, sheer passion for the craft, and finished product, that unfashionable—she is anything but.
