On Friday, students who managed to secure tickets to Fashion@Brown’s annual runway show flocked to 1 Davol Square. This year’s event brought together designers, models, photographers and stylists for a grand showcase of months of creative work.
Across over 30 collections, The Herald spoke to four designers who told the story of their distinct approaches, technical innovation and the narratives woven into their work.
Emma Zwall ’25 described her collection as “eerie, queer, outrageous and fierce.”
“My collection was inspired by a story I wrote about a queer kid in Dust Bowl South Dakota who gets trapped in an old house,” Zwall said, adding that in their story, the house was alive and haunted by the ghosts of two lesbian mothers.
Edie Fine ’25 in one of Zwall’s designs
“I wrote it on the train back from New York after interning with a fashion week designer named Gabe whose entire collection was based on this story about a girl’s dance team who kidnapped a boy’s wrestling team and turned them into sex dolls,” Zwall wrote in an email to The Herald.
She said this made her realize that she also wanted her collection to follow a narrative.
Each piece was designed to represent a different part of the house. “One look was the dining room, one look was the living room couch, one was the chandelier in the foyer,” Zwall explained. Other pieces represented the lesbian mothers and the hair in the shower drain.
Other students took different approaches, with Lucas Buckwell ’27 using fashion as a medium for exploring cultural and political themes, he wrote in an email to The Herald. Buckwell’s collection “Feed the Tree” explores “how heritage shapes our present day, and how attempting to erase our pasts has consequences,” he wrote in an email.
Bennett Lacerte ’27 in one of Buckwell’s designs.
The collection represented a funeral for a wedding — “the wedding element being representative of the unions that shape us, and the funeral aspect mourning the eradication of those unions,” Buckwell said.
Buckwell, who grew up in Miami as the son of immigrants, brings his personal experience into his exploration of cultural identity. “I know firsthand what good cultural diversity does for an individual’s and community’s experience,” he wrote.
He added that the collection’s narrative is intended to “parallel what is going on in politics right now.” Buckwell began conceptualizing the collection in November, just after the 2024 election.
“It was very heavy on my mind,” he added. “The collection is meant to be a warning against homogeneity and is meant to remind us how we got to this present moment.”
Visually, the collection draws from diverse influences, including the work of fashion designer Hussein Chalayan and architectural references like Luis Barragán’s colorful modernist buildings and London’s brutalist-style Barbican Center.
While Buckwell’s collection leans into symbolism and political memory, Chloe Chow ’26 approaches fashion through the lens of material exploration and engineering.
Chow’s collection, “Metalgalactic,” is a fusion of industrial processes and wearable art, built from white canvas and plasma-cut sheet metal.
Chow’s collection during the runway show.
Courtesy of Matthew Chen
“How does it feel when sculptural steel tendrils constrict your ribcage, crest your shoulders or dance at your hem?” Chow asked. This question became the foundation of a collection that treats steel not as a material, but as an entity: cold, reflective, sharp and alive.
As a self-taught seamstress and third-time F@B designer, Chow’s journey into fashion started in 2020 when she fired up her mom’s old sewing machine to make face masks at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a mechanical engineering and visual art double concentrator, Chow blends technical ability with fashion, using software and a plasma cutter to design, cut and construct each steel element.
“I have been working with steel for the last 15 months,” Chow added. “I like to say that I have a ‘material fluency’: a deep understanding of the material character that allows my designs to flow freely — the technical process is second nature.”
Julia Clark ’26 drew inspiration from the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh, with each garment representing a specific work: “Starry Night,” “Sunflowers” and “Almond Blossoms.”
Mina Cho ’27 in Clark’s “Starry Night” inspired dress
Clark saw this collection as a way to experiment with techniques and express her love for fine art through fashion. Her “Sunflowers” piece was crocheted — a nod to the painting’s whimsy, she said — while her “Almond Blossoms” dress involved techniques like ruching, gathering and working with mesh. “I really wanted to hone in on my sewing skills this year and try things I’d never done before,” she said.
Clark also made deliberate choices in pairing the model and the garment. “I thought carefully about who should wear each piece,” she said. “For ‘Almond Blossoms,’ I envisioned a daintier, more elegant walk. For ‘Starry Night,’ something funkier and more free-spirited.”
Reflecting on her fashion journey, Clark described a return to her roots. While her grandmother taught her to sew in elementary school, she reconnected with the craft upon her arrival at Brown. After creating a collection from thrifted tablecloths last year, she approached this year’s show with more precision, intentionality and ambition.
“This collection felt like a culmination of all the things I love,” Clark said. “It was something I was really proud to present on the runway.”
Summer Shi is a senior staff writer and illustrator for the Brown Daily Herald. She is from Dublin, California and is currently studying design engineering and philosophy.
