Fashion forward: Sheri Wu

Get ready: The future of fashion is almost here.

Friday, May 13, you’ll see some of the best looks in town at the CCAD Senior Fashion Show. Featuring designs from 17 seniors and one MFA candidate, the styles are smart, powerful, creative, and unique — much like the designers themselves. Students start preparing for the show in the spring of their junior year, says Suzanne Cotton, Chair of Fashion Design. Over the months, they travel to places like New York to source fabrics, work with models and submit their pieces to industry insiders from places such as Macy’s, Abercrombie & Fitch and Rocky Brands to determine what looks will be in the show. “It really is a full year,” Cotton says.

The fashion show represents one of the first opportunities for students to show off their years of work and study — and a rare moment to “create a collection that’s just them,” Cotton says. “It is the time when they can create something that is just their inspiration, what’s inside of them.” Over the coming weeks, we’ll hear from some of the students whose distinctive designs will take the runway.

First up: 22-year-old Sheri Wu, who, in addition to sending five looks down the runway, will also dress the evening’s emcee, WBNS-10TV anchor Kristyn Hartman, in a piece inspired by her collection — a fitted dress with cape sleeves that are slit in the front. “When she walks, they will basically move with her,” Wu says.

Fashion has been a lifelong interest of Wu’s, since she watched her mother sew when she was a young girl. Then, she says, “I started sewing in middle school, and the first garment I made was in high school, my junior year…. I made a denim jacket — and I still have it.”

Her Collection

The name of Wu’s collection, “Resonance,” is a nod to the R in MRI — a procedure she became intimately familiar with after being diagnosed with a brain tumor at age 16. (Her health has been stable since 2012.) Featuring custom fabric created by Wu from her own brain scans (both commercially printed by the service Spoonflower and a silk lining hand-printed by Wu herself), plus double-faced crepe, Resonance is a collection that “turns something that’s unfortunate, a horrifying event, into something beautiful,” she says.

And the end result? “I’m really happy with how everything turned out. I didn’t think that all of my looks would get in, and they did,” says Wu.

Her Sensibility

Wu’s personal style is “simple and clean and elegant. Because that’s how I want my life to be,” she says. She wants her designs to make their wearers feel “confident and strong…. When my models were wearing them, they looked powerful and strong and ready to take over the world.”

Her Advice

“Anything can happen — so just go for it,” says Wu.

___

Join CCAD for the hottest runway event in Columbus. The CCAD Senior Fashion Show gets underway Friday, May 13. Click here for more information.