Featured collection:

"New Heritage" [originally entitled "Slow"] --- check it out at http://www.saraellisclark.com/

Artist Statement excerpt:

"My family is cut from the cloth of southern farmers; my grandparents grew up picking cotton in Florence, AL, a place with a history of quilters that grew from a need to survive and to the need for expression. In an effort to keep this tradition alive, I have created a collection imbued with this heritage and a desire to learn through slow design and the details that characterize its beauty."

Fashion Show Theme:

"ACCELERATED EVOLUTION"

The show’s theme sparked unanimous referencing to Kubrick's "2001, A Space Odyssey amongst our studio. In my video, I tried to mimic the minimal and modernist aesthetic of the indoor spaces in the movie. I wanted to hone in on the dichotomy of the fashion line (southern heritage) and “Accelerated Evolution”. I eventually decided to tell a story first about the transfer from one world to another, and then from the screen to the runway.

My idea was to craft a story that built up to an open-ended resolution that the runway models themselves could finish for the viewer. Since we only had a minute or two to tell this story, I wanted to give it a very conceptual feel--a broad and atmospheric piece that's focus would be on the transition from your stereotypical cold and hyper-tech dystopia to the warmth and simplicity of the Southern farm.