to me fashion is more than a piece of clothing that is seen on the streets or in magazines fashion is a huge one of our it's a form of self expression fashion is its own culture you didn't side who you want to be an espresso with the clothing where and you do it without saying a word so be fabulous and be yourself because your style is your way of life is a had been a made when i was twelve well this is one of myself with you and i got a christmas present and i like it because it's really colorful it's a i don't miss the red shirt actually i wore it on the first day of design diaries and in both cases that meant looking at collections of their respective boats museums which also got them presented during teleconference with their counterparts and i stories through my clothing and the stories that i tell are sort of different adventures that i go on in my mind and i invite others to go on those adventures with me so my work in fashion to me is very much empowering people to pursue that adventurous lifestyle so i like to work with it with warm fabrics with wools natural fibers and and make clothes that people feel like they look good in but then they they also can and can wear their clothes on their outdoor adventure and just designing for me and designing for people like me and and people interested in the things same things i'm interested in when i tell people i'm a fashion sometimes i feel like i have to explain that i make these garments that are beautiful but i'm not particularly interested in runway or red carpet or high heels and lipstick i say that  being competitive is not a good trade in fashion design i think the best work comes from a collaborative effort and it's important in a community of fashion to have people supporting you and you know to bring your resources together it's important to know that what you're doing is important and if it's special to you and maybe your first clothes that you make aren't perfect you know mine definitely weren't there some that i look back on my data including i design that but it's all on this path to get you to where you're gone it takes a long time to get good and so you just have to continually design and make these things and be passionate about it i wanted open of in a store because i just have always been interested in things that are older i like call time periods like there's something about each thing that's interesting to me so it's more that what fits my body what i like for me and not what i wear but but in general it's very open instantly as i started i not only read books and all that but i met people and they would be like i got this job or nine hundred forty nine this is my first paycheck i bought this garment and then i was like you know i just in my mind i was like this is from nine hundred forty nine the fall season and there it was in my brain and i remember things very well so i was able to use one thing i did was i went to st paul campus and looked at all the votes because at the time you could actually touch the votes and i went through every season and i memorized every season of every year what was in style it helps to also know not only from my customers but from my first some people come in and they have like a notion of what something is like maybe the seventies looks like this or the seventy looks like and then i'll redirect like that's not really actually even from the seventies like i have to like teach people oftentimes sometimes i just let it go because it's not important it's only important that they're happy but if i have an opportunity to educate someone i do because i feel like if you constantly legitimating this information then then the history the history or the past will be lost my i'll is usually very modest sixty's i would say so i wear a lot of what they called shift dresses it's kind of the shape and you know shorter things and i just generally like really my looks from that it's late sixty's early seventy's my time varies i ritually was wearing secondhand i've been to clothing when i was in high school the vintage clothing trend was just starting as it was in a lot of movies back in the one nine hundred eighty s it's more environmentally friendly to recycle clothing rather than put it into the lab feel and so i thought well one thing i can do is i can buy almost everything vintage or secondhand and so i've been doing that since two thousand and eight and right now because i just did a clothing account and looked at the vintage  secondhand versus non vintage i made about forty eight percent of my whole wardrobe is into her second the quoting quality was a lot different and actually a lot i think better  things that are also better constructed and that will last beyond me i started sewing and i learned to sew for my mom my mom started sewing part because she was a tall woman and couldn't buy clothing off the rack and it was there was a real clear savings in sewing your own clothes and i think there's value in that too of creating something that you did i think that's really satisfying if you could get the same quality of fabric and and did good quality construction yourself i still think you have a better less expensive garment than a comparable i did my off the rack but you know these days we can all go to target we can all go all sorts of places and buy things we sell the same major pattern companies that the chains sell but then we also sell some small independent companies that you could never find at the chains and we also buy from a number number of fabric vendors who don't sell to the chains either if you work at trouble you have to know how to so you have to be a good problem solver about sewing and you've got to be great working with the public mary the owner when she when she opened her business felt that there was a need for a store that specialized in natural fiber fabrics and so that was the niche that she chose to fill and we've continued to do that you know our focus is really to have fabrics and the components you need to sew clothing and so most of our customers are so in closing and most of them are selling them for themselves in creating their final designs the girls had a few different challenges they had to meet their garments had to show something they had learned about their cultural past whether it was palestinian or american they also had to show something they learned about their partner's culture  and finally and probably most importantly to the girls they had to express who they were model based off of a lot of japanese culture but also incorporates palestinian i guess relationships with shapes and space one thing i learned about palace and culture is the symbolism in fashion i think in america there's a lot of aesthetic pieces and it's not there's not so much thought into why we need to put certain symbolism in our garments the process has been very different from things i've done before before sewing i've been more of a visual artist so paying attention to detail and being more exact with my measurements it's been harder but very educational my final design is a dress it's a short to an exile dress it's made mostly out of a pink cotton fabric but along the and the sleeves there's red floral geometric pattern i incorporated elements of palestinian culture by adding in long bell shaped sleeves like i saw on many of the palestinian work garments that we looked at and then i and corporate american history and so my dress by trying to design it like a sixty's dress i was really inspired by the go go dresses of that era my personal style was incorporated because i really like bright floral patterns and i really like dresses so those what i design for that  style is that i really like the print and the trim is shocking pink which is one of my favorite colors also it was introduced by shaft really in the thirty's so i thought that was kind of cool that it had that connection i incorporated palestinian through the border i drew i knew barely anything about palestinian culture before so i learned about kind of the situation in the middle east i learned a lot about palestinian border and palestinian clothing and also  interacting with the palestinian girls i learned that they might be different from us and so moist and live in a different place but they're really similar to us to my final design is a to length dress with a pleated skirt that has a lace train it is carefully tweak out the runs the minnesota part of the garment is in the color scheme which is green blue and pink because whenever i think of minnesota i think of all the green areas in the trees and the meadows and everything and then of course the ten thousand lakes would be the skirt is a blue with stripes of sparkles on it and then orange overlay and then i have a yolk which is traditionally on the top but i put it on the bottom and that sort of palestinian fabric with three fabric flowers on the help for the historic fashion i went with the bright bold colors from the sixty's and from my own spray sion i wanted something bright and all that remind me of trips to the bahamas with my family so i went with like coral and ocean colors i think my favorite part is the material that i use for the scar and it's this really awesome light blue fading into a dark blue fabric with like stripes of sparkles down it and i'm excited to wear it my final design is a dress and the skirt is a high low skirt of it's much shorter the front end it gradually gets longer in the back there's a shared top but as goes it goes over the whole dress with a peter pan collar a really big part of designing  was taking influences from my own culture i went to philadelphia recently and my grandmother had just died and it was really important to me to honor her memory by incorporating a lot of her history and her life into my garment and i think i did a really good job of that my final design is a long sleeved tunic basically and a orange and yellow and white and really bright and vibrant also i was really interested in that the palestinian culture uses for to ward off evil and so i thought it might be cool to incorporate some of those into my design and the hardest part about making the garment was probably finding inspiration and trying to draw inspiration from lots of different things like myself and my culture but also saying culture and also our history or us history with clothing and also minnesota culture and i think my designs are really different and so i like that it's kind of like out of the box and not really like convention my final design great sheer silk but then there are applique a velvet flowers on it and i really love it for american history i was inspired by the ninety's so i went more into the ground gee look with the boosters black and the jeans are black and then a dark purple dress i didn't know much about palestinian culture before so now i know a lot more i know that there's a really deep history in the embroidery and textiles there and that they can say things about themselves through clothing which i think is really important for everyone is to express themselves through clothing so that's really cool and i found design  dress inspired by palestinian culture and also my skin culture learning like from teleconferencing with the girls over there i learned a lot about embroidery color meaning and also like  how different colors represent different things the hardest part of making my garmin would be trying trying to fit the pattern that i wanted to move into like my side because it was bigger and also figuring out how i was going to use a palestinian fabric into my dress and personal the living color of my dresses rose pink and its many dress how much embroidered they put into their outfits and i was able to see a lot of different motifs and the colors of their garments that they use which is mainly black and red i incorporated embroidery for for it to relate to palestinian culture and there's fleas on the diagnosis of my dress my favorite part of this garment is the embargo it took a very long time but i think it just turned out very well but i found a design as a dress i made a jest because i wanted something that would capture my personality i also had a palestinian and very very which is really fun to work with because  i got to learn more about pass an embroidery throughout the whole experience i got to learn what different symbols mean the clothing and as i got to learn why about their traditional wear and what they wear special occasions as well embroidery took me over like three weeks to do but it was really worth it the last part of my dress as actually the scary part which i really enjoyed doing it was frustrating at times but i really like how it turned design is a pair of pants and a tank top i use the palestinian fabric at the top and the bottom as well as block printing on my final garment with white paint the cut of the garment was inspired by ninety's attire while the colors in the the fabric were more palestinian i didn't know much about palestinian culture before starting this program so everything i know now i've learned from this program but the thing that struck me the most that i've learned and it is the way that their fashion really ties into their culture historically and the rich history that it has the hardest part about making the garment was the learning curve because i didn't know much about altering patterns changing them or even about technically how to sew so the hardest part was to i was to accept everything that i was being taught and believe that it would come out right in the end which is my final design is a lavender dress from the nineteen fifties to include the palestinian culture and making a belt out of the palestinian fabric that only i brought back so it's going to be like in the middle and it is made out of the gold striped fabric and something i learned was that with the palestinian garments they have like a red stripe on along the bottom of their skirt to signify that they are single and like looking for somebody i think oh where my for a garment to like nice early evening events i think it might be a little bit too fancy for school  hundred sixty s hollywood pants when i learned about the palestinian people i learned about like their clothing which is really interesting and embroidery also talking to the girls  back in jerusalem it was quite interesting to learn that they watch a lot of the same t v shows as i do like teen wolf pretty little liars the design of the pants are also like and american and palestinian i really wanted to show a multicultural all diversity aspect into this garment because i'm also a cultural person i used the bird represents for a light passing culture like they have overcome like trying to gain the independence also from the african american culture like it represents like freedom so i thought like the bird will be a great way to represent my culture and also the passing culture the design part was difficult because i hadn't had experience before drawing and designing so i was a beginner at it but once i kind of idea what i wanted to do i just kind went with it and then sewing was also something new for me as well so after i kind of that used to kept on practicing that it became easier and easier it was just more of a mental thing just trying to endure it and even though when things got challenging just keep going my final design is a great coat with palestinian embroidery on the collar and the collar is pretty big and it's draped so it's a little bit structured but not super structured the hardest part was probably making the pattern i bought a pattern of a coat that i kind of liked but then i had to adjust that so i did a lot of drape in and it was really challenging to get the look and fit that i wanted the shape of the car was inspired by sixty's car coast and i'm doing palestinian embroidery on the col and then for american history the sixty's car coats but also i'm incorporating some embroidery from my family and to the palestinian embroidery  and it's pretty minimalistic and that's nice my final design is a circle skirt and it's a flow of peppa skaters the skirts that you usually see nowadays that are getting you start off one way and then everything changes i started off with a high waisted pants and i realize that's hard so i switch it up to a highway sister to the hardest part would be having it how i wanted it i really wanted it to be we on the bottom was like a lot of ripples going through it but how it was made before you have to make it more of a circle in the bottom and less of a circle on top and i didn't know that at first so then i really did it  so that was hard to do you have a vision and you're trying to have that vision and be shown in your piece and it's really hard when the fabric isn't working with you it's working against you so get to work with the key to highlight first some of doing the sheriff's and doing the justice and getting everything put together i didn't think it would be really that hard for everybody for a person to do that so i actually went through it and i saw how hard it is i have a lot of appreciation for people who actually design well my favorite part would be meeting new people knowing their culture and actually talking to them gets to know them i like the faith of here it's very simple i guess the whole experience of just getting out of my own comfort zone and my own country my people and just meeting new people i like china and the culture and and also the people here were here in the u s and i come from middle east it's totally a different world so when we first met i'm actually talk to the girls like ok they're normal girls just like us so where it's working hi my name is mason santos hi my name is molly how i react i ended up visiting jerusalem and over there i learned a lot about the culture and the people i was very surprised to see how similar it is to over here and how much i can relate to the girls while i'm really surprised that they know so much about american culture as a thing american teenagers do one thing that surprised me when i first met the palestinian girls is how go in all the work it's been totally normal it's been like hanging out with another american teenager i kind of expected them to be as like shy like the kids at my school but a lot of them were like hi how the day event it was kind of fun and interesting to meet them and have them so excited to be in the program and then each of the girls walked across the stage wearing the garment she wore as her art and statement was being read so it was a real moment of pride and kind of completion for each participant