It was pouring rain outside the Nippon Kan Theatre on May 17, but inside, light glinted off hanging iridescent prisms and filtered through pink and green window coverings, emulating stained glass. The crowd inside, soggy and well-dressed, gathered for MESH’s fourth annual fashion show, PRISMATIC.
MESH is a fashion-focused RSO that hosts educational workshops and puts on two major events throughout the year, including an expo in winter quarter and a fashion show in spring.
This year’s fashion show, according to Amy Sun, fourth-year student and MESH president, and Ned Wojcik, fourth-year student and MESH vice president, was the RSO’s biggest event yet, with 27 total designers, 22 collections split over three acts, and so many models that I never got an exact count from any of the MESH board members.
Wojcik, who also designed a Frankenstein-inspired collection for the show under the name WOJBOMB, said that, after four years since the RSO’s founding, the MESH board has streamlined their process for the fashion show, shifting the timing of editorial photo shoots, dress rehearsals, and other preparations to maximize their time and minimize stress.
Wojcik joined the board as creative director last year, but was involved as a workshop participant, designer, and model for two years prior to joining the leadership team.
“Watching the club as a participant, and getting that lens, and being able to join and being like, ‘I think we should do this differently because as a designer or as a model or a workshop member this didn’t work great,’” Wojcik said. “But then also realizing how much work it is to run this club was crazy.”
Running the show at Nippon Kan Theatre, too, was a new development for the RSO after hosting most of their previous events on campus.
“On campus, it’s cheaper because we can find more funding through ASUW, [Graduate and Professional Student Senate], and the [Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center],” Sun said. “But off campus, we really have to fund ourselves, and we are really lucky that last year the Intellectual House was so affordable that we were able to put those ticket sales into this year’s show venue more.”
At the show, this extensive planning more than paid off. The show was divided into three sets, titled “Turquoise,” “Celadon,” and “Cerise,” with seven or eight collections in each set. Models walked across the stage to tracks played by DJ Skirmish, collection by collection, stepped down the stairs to join the audience’s level on the floor, and posed for camera flashes while the audience cheered and gasped. The show ran with the kind of ease that made the logistics invisible, pushing the creativity and visual spectacle to the forefront of the audience’s attention.
Rasheed Al Hejailan, a third-year, MESH’s collaborations director, and a lead model, said the partnership between designers and models begins when the leadership team makes lookbooks for both the designer’s sketches and the model’s photos and videos.
“We have a whole social where designers get to pitch their collections and models get to watch,” Al Hejailan said. “And then there’s a social afterwards where they get to talk to each other and be like, ‘I liked your design, I want to model for you,’ or the designer is like, ‘You’re the vibe that I want, I want you to model for me.’”
These designs spanned multitudes of aesthetic influences, materials, and constructions, from the cowboy-inspired, denim-clad, silver-accented looks of Akhil Raote’s “Blue Light” to the crisp red paper cranes, conical hats, and hand-soldered chains of Calliope Kim’s “MYgrations.”
My personal favorite collections, time and again, were the ones brimming with so much texture and character they felt like they could populate a universe. The design duo BOAF created four looks inspired by video game designs, complete with boxy fists with “POW” painted on the front and a comically huge baby pink rifle. Final Boss Crochet’s collection “Perisho” was such a clear labor of love and time, with beautifully draped crochet pieces each distinct from each other. “fools” by TRIEUTH looked like a parade of punk jesters, intricately detailed and committing wholly to its premise, with models holding painted masks and harlequin patterns covering the garments.
The “KIZZES” collection, co-designed by fourth-years Kalin Sivolella and Liz Huang, featured cutouts, bold colors, gold rings, and knotted ropes with each looking like they belonged at a rave. This is unsurprising, as the two met through the rave scene (introduced to each other by Sun) and took inspiration from their own friendship when designing. This was Sivolella’s second year designing for MESH and Huang’s fourth, but it is the first year in which they have co-designed together.
“It’s always nice to have a second eye on things. When you’re designing by yourself, I need to step away so I can get a fresh eye on this, but now, I’m just like ‘Hey, Kalin, look at this for me.’” Huang said. “Having someone I want to impress, not only me and my designs, but I’m representing her and I’m proud to be represented by her in turn.”
“I think about that a lot in even just the stuff that we wear every day, we have different aesthetics,” Sivolella said. “I think it’s cool and it comes out in the show, even when we’re doing sketches and stuff. [Huang] will be working on something and [she’ll] be like, ‘What if it was like this,’ and I’ll be like, ‘I never would have thought of something like that but that’s cool, let’s do it.’”
The emotions associated with long-time collaboration and friendship were especially salient at the show — the last MESH event of the academic year — and for graduating seniors Sun, Wojcik, Sivolella, and Huang.
“One thing that Ned and I have been talking about is somebody is gonna cry at the show and it’s probably gonna be me,” Sun said. “I have spent so much time in my four years being a part of this, that I can’t really imagine what it’s like after.”
At the end of the show, when the rest of the leadership team gathered on the stage and handed bouquets of flowers to Sun and Wojcik, there was indeed some crying.
“It’s such a lovely community to have been a part of for four years now,” Wojcik said. “Not just in terms of being surrounded by creative people, but MESH is just full of queer people and weird, artsy people that are all into such different things and can all coexist in such a lovely way.”
Reach writer Daphne Bunker at arts@dailyuw.com.X: @daphnebunks. Bluesky: @daphnebunks.bsky.social
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