Studying in style: WSU apparel design students showcase their senior collections, for many a culmination of a lifelong effort

Women in old-Hollywood glam, a man in a brown, cloudlike vest and girls in ultramini Y2K skirts bustled around as Stephanie Castro sat, hands clasped, tapping her feet backstage at the annual Washington State University student fashion show.

Minutes later, a Backstreet Boys song blared as models wearing Castro’s designs strutted down the runway, showcasing her years of hard work to go from toiling in Yakima apple fields to graduating with a degree in apparel design and merchandising from WSU.

The 19 seniors studying design in WSU’s Apparel Merchandizing, Design and Textiles program showed off their senior collections at the 40th annual program fashion show last weekend.

Some, like Castro, designed streetwear meant to be worn in everyday life, while others, like Saira Allan, created couture ensembles meant to dazzle on the red carpet.

All of the students share a dream that their degree will land them jobs in the competitive and ever-changing fashion industry.

Style from the start

At 11, Allan, her twin sister and mother moved to Anacortes, Washington, from Cebu City, a Philippine provincial capital with a population of nearly 1 million.

Allan, the older twin by a few minutes, loved to play dolls with her sister, but there wasn’t much extra money to expand their Barbies’ wardrobes. So Allan made new outfits for the dolls herself.

“It was mostly hand-sewing at first,” Allan said.

A guest speaker from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, a premiere fashion school in Los Angeles, came to Allan’s high school and shared her experience traveling across the globe to buy fabric. Allan was sold – design was for her.

Allan always had her own style. She started making clothes for herself at a young age, said her sister, Saina Allan. At 5-foot, Saira Allan started reworking clothes for herself and her sister, tailored to perfectly fit their petite frames.

Her family suggested she go into a practical field like nursing, but Allan couldn’t be dissuaded from pursuing design.

“Something about America is all about finding what you’re really passionate about and finding something that you’re happy with,” Saira Allan said. “I thought that I could risk it and find out.”

Four years later, clad head-to-toe in black, Allan sits while painstakingly hand-stitching a dark, shimmery organza, a delicate semisheer fabric, into a smocked pattern in the design program’s studio. It’s the back panel of a skirt for her senior design collection.

In walked Rowan Dunn, a sophomore set to model one of Allan’s designs. Pins in her mouth, Allan checked the fit of a pair of cotton pants she created as a mock-up before starting on the trickier, faux-leather version.

Once she was happy with the fit, Allan returned to her hand sewing. A similar scene played out at each work station in the large, sunny studio tucked in to the western end of campus.

The Apparel Merchandizing, Design and Textiles program at WSU is the largest of its kind in the state. Students can study fashion design or focus on the merchandising side of the business.

The annual fashion show, which is planned by merchandising students, is a chance to get real-world experience.

“It’s just a big moment every year for us to provide students opportunities to display their designs,” said Yini Chen, director of the fashion show.

For Castro, 27, the show collection was nearly a decade in the making.

Castro and her twin brother, Dario, and little sister Jacquelin grew up with their parents in Yakima, until their father got deported to Mexico when she was 14. Her parents had just bought a new house.

“My mom had to take care of three kids and pay bills,” Castro said.

After two years of struggling to be there for her kids while working overnight at an apple warehouse, Castro’s mom decided to move the entire family back to Mexico.

The twins, who were born in the United States, couldn’t get into a Mexican high school because it was too late in the year, Castro said. They only lasted a few weeks before returning to Yakima to finish school while living with their uncle.

Castro has loved fashion since middle school. In the 2010s, Lady Gaga’s outlandish red carpet looks piqued her interest.

“I thought it was pretty cool to see how stuff like that was made,” Castro said.

Dario Castro remembers his sister’s constant doodling in middle school that quickly turned in to design sketches.

“She would just come up with these designs on the spot. She would just make them appear,” Dario Castro said. “The level that she’s at now is because she started so young.”

She got a sewing machine, and her passion grew from there. After high school, Stephanie Castro headed to WSU to study apparel design and merchandising, but her financial aid fell through. So she went back to Yakima and attended community college before taking a year off to work while saving for classes at WSU.

By 2019, Castro had saved enough money by working in Yakima Valley apple orchards to return to Pullman.

“I never stopped wanting to come over here,” Castro said. “I was just like, ‘OK, well a little bump in the road.’ ”

From concept to creation

Sitting by the ocean in her hometown of Anacortes last summer, Saira Allan’s mind kept drifting back to her senior collection. She was eager to start work but needed inspiration .

She looked back to the ocean and wished she could bottle the familiar sound of incoming waves to bring back to Pullman.

You can hear the ocean in a conch shell. “What’s that called?” Saira Allan remembers thinking of the phenomenon.

Google held the answer – seashell resonance.

More research uncovered that the larger the conch shell, the better the sound, she said. Those larger shells are found in the dark, swirling depths of the ocean.

She began imagining dark, swirling, shimmering evening gowns.

Saira Allan began fleshing out the concept with sketches. She settled on a three-piece collection featuring faux-leather, a black, shimmery organza and a copper shade of a similar fabric.

A Netflix binge led to Stephanie Castro’s inspiration for her collection. She watched “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners,” an anime show about a technology-obsessed futuristic city, and started to draw, she said.

Her goal was to create a wearable collection of clothes that were versatile, functional and stylish.

She created three looks: a white jumpsuit, where the top and pants can be separated and worn with other items; a skirt and jacket combo, where the jacket converts into a tote bag; and a pant and jacket set, with the jacket turning into a small handbag.

The ensembles create a cohesive collection in blue and white with zippers, cutouts and hoods all done in the same style.

The collection is an example of sustainability in fashion design, said Xingqui Lou, Castro’s professor. The more functions a single item can perform, the fewer articles of clothing a consumer needs in their wardrobe.

Trend-focused collections like Stephanie Castro’s that have a sustainable element are “the future of fashion,” Lou said.

Stephanie Castro envisions young people mixing and matching her clothes, maybe to attend a music festival where they wear shorts and carry their jacket as a purse during the day, then zip on the legs and jacket to keep warm at night.

Judging day

It was a mad rush to stitch it all together in time for judging day, which took place a week before the fashion show.

Judging day for the WSU fashion program can open up a world of opportunity, including internships and awards, Lou said. A panel of faculty and industry experts judges each collection and gives designers feedback.

Students explain the inspiration for their collections, then give a detailed description of their ideal client and price point.

Saira Allan’s delicate and precise fabric manipulation landed her the best technical collection award.

The day wasn’t without hiccups, though. A zipper on her faux-leather pants popped open, and the smocking Saira Allan spent more than 160 hours on broke.

Judges were impressed by her “mastery of fabrics” but suggested Saira Allan vary her necklines.

Her models all dressed, Stephanie Castro marched into the judging room, despite her nerves. She teared up during her presentation and admittedly struggled to answer questions from judges.

Despite Stephanie Castro’s worn nerves, the feedback was positive, encouraging her to pursue design in niche industries, like apparel lines to accompany video games.

“Great styling and make-up to finish the look and make it complete,” one judge wrote.

Showtime

Pop music blared in the maze of rooms above Beasley Coliseum as Saira Allan delicately placed her model’s bright green curls around her face.

“Done!” Saira Allan sang, stretching the syllable as she finished her final model’s hair.

She oversaw every detail, including makeup and hair, in the hours before the show.

Stephanie Castro was more hands-off, arriving just before the rehearsal to finish her models’ makeup. She sat in the rows of empty seats, nestled in a green cardigan over her all-black ensemble, tapping her long fingernails over her clear green plastic handbag.

“I’m, like, excited and nervous,” she said. “I’m just hoping I don’t twist my ankle or something.”

Her models were a bit nervous, too.

Dallas Martin, 19, said she felt “really good, very confident” in the look but was “very nervous” to walk the runway in front of hundreds of attendees.

She also worried about quickly zipping her top into a purse while on stage.

“It was rough at first,” she said of the transition. “But I’m feeling good about it now.”

Before the show, Saira Allan went to greet her family in a wine garden set up for guests.

“We’re going to her ‘Project Runway,’ ” Marlu Allan, her aunt, said she had been telling friends. “Everybody knows what that is.”

As she fielded questions about her semester and the collection, Saira Allan couldn’t contain her smile, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by her uncle, Scott Stallard.

“I just love her glow,” he said.

As the crowds’ chatter grew in front of the curtain, backstage turned into a series of impromptu photo shoots.

Saira Allan and Stephanie Castro wrapped their arms around each other as a friend snapped away on her cellphone.

Then it was time.

Stephanie Castro led her models up the side stage stairs, fixing Martin’s hair in the process. When the announcer began reading her collection description, Stephanie Castro nervously covered her face with her hands.

She tapped the first model, who started down the catwalk.

Minutes later, Stephanie Castro walked down the stage herself, beaming and waving to a roar of applause. At the end, her family met her, heaping flowers and a gift bag into her arms.

“I can’t even believe it,” she gushed once backstage. “I got, like, this rush.”

Saira Allan snapped into focus, rushing to dress her models as they came off stage from showing other designers’ looks.

All dressed in the final look, Dunn did a quick spin – the copper organza floating around her.

“I feel really confident in it,” Dunn said. “It’s absolutely a dress you have to twirl around in.”

As her biography was read, Saira Allan waved a black lace fan over her face, her smile visible behind it.

Music floated through the air, much like Saira Allan’s gowns, as she watched from backstage, then stepped out to cheers from the crowd.

Waving with both hands, she walked the runway, leading her models.

Once backstage, Saira Allan began to sob into her flowers.

“It went so fast,” she said with a smile and a shrug.