Celebrate 2009 with Vancouver’s Newest Talent

January 14th, 2009 | Published in Designers

Dress designers left to right: Kylie Henry, Victoria Hedin, Sarah Prost, Sophia Chao.
Words by Maria

Last week String Magazine’s New Year Editorial featured four dresses designed by four recent fashion design graduates. Below we put the spot light on each one as they talk about their ventures, dreams, and beginnings.

Sarah Prost

Sarah Prost Dress Sarah has a smile on her face as she welcomes me into a table at a Starbucks downtown. The photo shoot has gone well and I tell her so with many sighs of relief. Only two days before, I was at the studio shooting our New Year Editorial and her dress is the most voluminous of the four being featured in the shoot: long with white bias-cut ribbons cascading down its length and copious amounts of crinoline beneath all the silk. The Queen of Spades influenced Prost’s graduation mini-collection and the song Luck Be a Lady by Frank Sinatra played a major role in this dress’s design. “It’s just a big showpiece that everyone would think a queen would wear,” Prost explains, “she would enter wearing the dress and all eyes would be on her.” Looking at the dress closer, one will notice the hand-embroidered buttons with the spade symbol not much more than a centimetre long. The details and construction are exquisite—a piece that is fit for a queen indeed.

Prost was born and raised in a small town in Vancouver Island and has since removed herself even further after coming to Vancouver and studying at Helen Lefeaux: she is now residing in New Hampshire, fairly close to the fashion capital of America, where she is designing a line of lingerie. Home is where the heart is, however, and Prost is not planning on leaving it behind. “I want to come back to BC,” she says, “It’s a good place to start—there are a lot of independent designers and there are so many people here that are so creative.” Creativity is very important to Prost and that is why she decided to attend Helen Lefeaux. She feels that the school embraces students’ creativity fully and doesn’t set limits for what their imaginations can bring to the work table. “Helen Lefeaux was very one-on-one with the teachers,” Prost remembers, “they were all so good—they all had their own lines, they were so inspiring and knew everything that was going on [...] they would understand your ideas and help you make them into reality.” Fun as it was, programs like these are always packed to the brim, so she advices future students to stay strong. “Get lots of sleep before you start and make sure you don’t quit,” Prost counsels, “there will be so many times when you feel like you want to just stop, but don’t. [...] You’ll thank yourself for it.”

Victoria Hedin

Victoria Hedin Dress Victoria Hedin resides in one of those old Victorian houses (pun not intended) so characteristic of Vancouver—and the cozy suite at the back she calls home is just as charming. Her real home, however, is in an equally delightful location by the name of Slave Lake, Alberta. She came all the way to Vancouver to study fashion at the Art Institute of Vancouver. Although her first passion is painting, she has always had a special spot in her heart for fashion. “I’ve always loved fashion and I always loved designing things when I was younger,” says Hedin. However, to take these designs and make them real is another story, “My main goal when coming here was I really wanted to learn how to take an idea and then make the block, make the pattern, and finish it,” explains Hedin, “and it would be something that I could do all by myself and I’d know how to do it.”

Her graduation mini collection proves that she learned this process well. Inspired by Old West saloon girls her collection stood out for its subtle sexiness and wearability—if not by the masses then no doubt by the extroverted types. Hedin advices new design students, however, to not worry too much about “wearability” while they still can. “Just go crazy,” she smiles, “don’t do something just because you think it will be easy. Try something that might be harder and more challenging and your teachers will see your creativity and appreciate that you tried something new.” The dress featured in the New Year Editorial is all black—a slit comes daringly high, but the collar definitely steals the show: made voluminous by its ample folds it frames the wearer’s face quite pleasingly. The Saloon Girl theme was a tribute to her family: “My family is kind of into that whole cowboy thing,” she laughs, “our house is all decorated in that way, too.” Her cowboy-themed home will see less of Hedin in the future as she is planning on staying in Vancouver to form her career. “The feeling I get is that Vancouver is more supportive of new fashion designers,” says Hedin, “I don’t feel as… scared to start my own line because I know that I could probably get all the support I need.”

Sophia Chao

Sophia Chao Dress Watching the final piece of Blanche Macdonald’s graduation fashion show on the runway I thought to myself that I had never seen anything quite like it and made a mental note to feature it in one of String’s editorials. The dress, inspired by chandeliers, is completely black. A sheer neckpiece embellished with lace appliqué frames the jaw line and sets the mood of elegance that extends throughout the dress. The bodice is the first of many layers that run down the skirt’s length—connecting to each other and structured by a wire skeleton. Its resemblance to a chandelier is evident, but what one would think glibly of a dress that looks like a chandelier is not at all what this dress conveys. It is unique, intriguing, elegant, and and an art piece all at the same time. Sophia Chao, the creator of this dress, finds that inspiration comes from many different places: “There is beauty in everything around us, things like architecture, art, people and their culture,” she states. And this time, she was inspired by chandeliers. “A challenge I encountered near the beginning was that I did not want the piece to seem too flat or two dimensional,” she recalls, “I wanted something that really emphasised its inspiration in all shapes and forms”.

Sophia’s determination in her career aided her in her decision to move away from Taiwan, where she was born and raised, and travel to our side of the ocean to study at Blanche Macdonald in hopes of opening doors for herself in her path to success. “I come from a family that has no background in the industry, but from a young age I have been interested in fashion. That led me to go overseas to improve my skills,” Chao states, “I believe coming to the West has given me a greater opportunity of being successful in this industry and of working with international companies.” She is clearly a committed individual that strives to do her best. Her love of fashion started at a young age, and she has been working at her dream ever since. “I believe I am passionate about everything I do. When I commit myself to something I am in 100%,” Chao states. There is no doubt of the talent she possesses and she is now hard at work on a full collection of her own, but back in her native Taiwan. However, she does plan to come back to Vancouver and search her options here. “Vancouver’s fashion community is still growing, but slowly,” she says, “but this is great for up-and-coming talent because it creates a market for fashion that I believe Vancouverites are craving.”

Kylie Henry

Kylie Henry Dress Snow covers the sidewalks in front of all the shops, but The Barefoot Contessa’s windows grin through the frost and a warm atmosphere greets its visitors as they enter. Kylie Henry is the manager of this most lovely store, famous for its exquisite selection of dresses and all things that are pretty. Henry’s own graduation collection would make a perfect fit at the store, with its bountiful lace appliqués and delicate lines. A favourite of many at the Blanche Macdonald graduation show, each piece in Henry’s mini-collection complimented the other and the final long grey gown with black lace was the perfect punctuation mark. A black velvet ribbon draws attention to the waistline and distinguishes the romantic bodice from the fluid skirt, which reaches to the floor and lengthens even further at the back forming a graceful tail—just as graceful as the ballerinas that inspired Henry in its creation. “Victorian ballerinas [inspired this collection]. In the imagery I’ve seen they hold themselves so differently—it’s inspiring,” Henry states, “the silhouettes, too, with the natural waistline and the tutu flaring out.”

The inspiration to follow a career as a fashion designer came from a very different place, however. “The first time I knew I wanted to get into fashion was when watching The One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Cruella de Vil was designing her Dalmatian dress,” she laughs, “that was when I was like, ‘I want to be a fashion designer!’” Though thankfully Henry won’t ever follow any of Cruella de Vil’s practices, she recognizes her as the one that, in Henry’s words, “put the bug in my bonnet.” And with that bug in her bonnet Henry set out from her Penticton home to find the institution which was to teach her the ways of the fashion world. She settled herself at Blanche Macdonald where she took both the merchandising program and the design program. “I loved the school, it was like a family. The teachers are so good, they really care about the students and are so pumped full of knowledge,” boasts Henry, “they’re either working in the industry or have worked in it for their entire lives, so they have so many connections and are kept up to date.” After all this schooling Henry is going to be taking it slow and open up an Etsy shop after a long-deserved break. Don’t be surprised, however, if you see her at BC Fashion Week next fall with her own collection and her stuff at Holt Renfrew—things and minds change quite frequently and to Henry this is something one should never be afraid of. “Don’t be afraid to change your mind,” she advices, “when I was in school I’d say, ‘yes, this is what I’m going to do,’ and then next week, ‘no, I never want to do that!’ Be open to everything because you never, ever know.”