Unleash Your Inner Designer

There’s a new 8th grade fashion class at Wells, and “it’s fire.”

The blurb for the class reads: 

Unleash your inner designer by joining this dynamic course where creativity meets style. You'll learn how fashion designers transform ideas into reality, from trend research to creating unique sketches. In this course, you'll discover how to create professional mood boards, develop your own illustration style, explore sneaker design and licensing, and understand garment elements. Experience hands-on construction to bring 2D designs to life in a collaborative setting. Whether you aim to become a designer or simply enjoy fashion, this course shows how imagination becomes reality. By the end, you'll have a portfolio filled with your illustrations, mood boards, and design projects.

Megan Naclerio, the art teacher, designed the class and could not be better suited to teach fashion. She graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC and spent ten years working as a fabric and stationery designer.

“My dream is to be a fashion designer and have my own line of clothing,” said Charlene G.

“I am taking the class to get a gist of fashion and the industry,” said Cinthia D.

The assignment this morning is to participate in a reflective “gallery walk” of their first project: fashion illustrations.

For their illustrations, students were given free reign to design creatively. They learned about fashion color theory, the basics of figure drawing, and illustrative shading. Then they got to work creating two original looks which combined garment elements. Once completed, the drawings were cut out and placed on a stark black background, making a dramatic statement.

Naclerio then handed out post-it notes with descriptive words like edgy, playful, utilitarian, polished, opulent, dramatic, luminious, minimalist, and romantic. Students discussed the descriptions and placed them next to the designs they felt best matched the words. 

As students walked from look to look, they also got a glimpse of their classmates current project in progress: a decades inspired Moodboard. There were discussions about each fashion era and what was happening in the world at the time, which morphed into a lesson in American Studies in addition to design and fashion.