Fashion club's rad romance at Brandywine
Sami Meck, a senior at Brandywine Heights High School, works on an outfit she designed for "Brandywine Goes Gaga," a fashion show inspired by pop idol Lady Gaga set for April 14 at the school.
But it's not the pop idol's often-outrageous glitz that inspires the Brandywine Heights High School senior's fashion creativity.
Working on a Gaga-influenced dress, Oswald said it was the Grammy-winning singer's lyrics that motivated his design.
"Her songs are about love and peace," said Oswald, 17. "She's not just rich and famous; she has social values, too."
Oswald's depiction of Lady Gaga as something more than a superstar was shared by a other students in Brandywine's art club, which is preparing for a fashion show inspired by the singer.
"Brandywine Goes Gaga," which features fashions designed and modeled by Brandywine students, will be held April 14 at the high school.
Wearing sequin-covered dresses, net veils and racy nylons, Brandywine's models will stroll down a 72-foot runway patterned after those in New York's fashion district.
Suzanne Oswald, art club adviser - and no relation to Bronson Oswald - said the students' outfits are not exact recreations of costumes designed by Haus of Gaga, the star's fashion house.
"Lady Gaga might have been the inspiration," she said, "but we encouraged students to exercise their own creativity."
Working off drawings and miniature mock-ups on Ba! rbie dol ls, art students are creating costumes out of duct tape, netting and plastic sheeting.
Sarah Stahl used clear plastic beach balls and hundreds of sequins to fashion an outfit she calls "A Human Snow Globe."
"It's my own creation, but it's influenced by Lady Gaga's bizarre costumes," said Stahl, 18, art club co-president. "The snow inside my globe is made of glitter."
Shelby Snyder used Starburst candy wrappers braided into long chains to spice up the ballerinalike tutu she designed for her sister, Mackenzie, who's in sixth grade at Brandywine Middle School.
"I wanted something colorful, and I thought of Starburst wrappers," said Snyder, 18, a senior. "I think it made the tutu a little more elegant."
To Nadia Greene, Lady Gaga fashions are, if anything, resourceful. In that spirit, the 18-year-old senior is crafting hundreds of tea bag tabs into a trendy sheath the likes of which Lady Gaga might wear to the Grammy Awards.
"I had this vision of orange, kind of like the color of koi fish," said Green, who was weaving orange tea-bag tabs into the skirt of her creation. "I thought these tabs captured the color that I was after."
The focus on Lady Gaga's far-out fashions is in marked contrast to last year's art club fashion show, which recreated classic designs by Christian Dior, Givenchy and other fashion icons.
Suzanne Oswald acknowledges the dramatic change but says students are learning the same skills no matter what the finished product looks like. They employ artistic skills in drawing the designs, learn sewing and stitching and, above all, exercise creativity.
Emily MacAdam, 17, based her costume on awareness of social issues, which she says underlies much of Lady Gaga's fashion.
MacAdam, art club co-president, fashioned a dress from duct tape, newspaper articles and chrome studs.
"It represents the income gap," said MacAdam, a senior. "All of the articles I used are about the nation's economic crisis."
Victoria Kunkle, 18, went to ! the oppo site extreme, preferring the outrageous in the outfit she crafted from aluminum foil, duct tape and packaging foam.
"Your design can be anything," she said. "Lady Gaga can pull of anything, as long as it is a little out there."
Contact Ron Devlin: 610-371-5030 or rdevlin@readingeagle.com.