Surrounded by headless mannequins and tables cluttered with fabric, needles, and thread, Quinn L. Dang ’09 comments on the superiority of this space to past rooms she’s worked in. “We had this small costume shop in high school...you’d sit there costuming for hours. It was tiny and stuffy—we called it the shop of horrors.”
Now seated in the costuming area of Loeb Experimental Theatre, Dang, who has been involved in fashion since high school, talks about her experiences costuming for various shows at Harvard. One such show was “Playboy of the Western World,” a play that Dang insists was “a lot more innocuous than it sounds.” Dang also created her own collection for the student design program of last year’s Identities Fashion Show. So, it comes as no surprise that this senior is calm and collected with only five hours to go until her design hits the runway.
In fact, wearing a zebra print tank top, white blazer, and dark jeans tucked into her black knee high leather boots, Dang’s biggest hurdle came not from lack of time or experience. Instead, it came upon receiving her inspirational alum Cotton Mather, class of 1678.
Dang says her initial reaction was an incredulous, “How am I going to do this?!” She started thinking of Mather house, puritans, and witches, in order to get ideas.
At 10 a.m. the morning of the show, Dang left for Winmil Fabrics in Boston, where she’s shopped for other costume and design projects in the past. She spent only 10 minutes and $23.92 at the store—eight cents shy of the $24 limit—and bought four yards of black and white jersey fabric. “I knew ahead of time I wanted jersey, black and white. It took longer getting there than shopping.”
Armed with just one page of sketches drawn the night before, Dang entered Loeb’s costume shop around 11 a.m., and got to work cutting, pinning, sewing, and draping. While holding a handful of pins and working on the back of the gown, Dang begins to discuss her vision. “I knew I had to use black, because I wanted the color to be very reminiscent of the time period.”
She explains, “The design is Puritan without the pure. I put a sexy twist on what would be the color scheme of that time period. It seems very neutral, but the designs and the lines are very contemporary.”
Dang’s vision is realized in her final product—a floor length backless black gown, with white asymmetric cutouts around the midsection, and an added cape for flare. “I’m taking all the elements and color that were part of the theme for Cotton Mather and putting my own style to it,” she says. The dress does just that as it captures the no-nonsense mindset of the Puritan Mather, while also capturing the attention of all those who pass it by.
