2025 Designer Profile: Eli Dunlap and Caleb Woodlon

Eli: I’m a third-year double major in Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU) and Law, Letters, and Society (LLSO). 

Caleb: I’m a second-year Psychology major. 

What are your major inspiration or influences on your designs: 

Our main inspiration was life cycles and the different stages of life. We also drew a lot of inspiration from the 90’s. 

Caleb: I’m inspired a lot by Jervais Hendrix, Lil Yachty, and Pharell.

What are the major themes of your designs? Is there anything particular that you are trying to convey?

The different life cycles we focused on were birth, self, death, and rebirth. Working as a duo has been really fun. We’ve gotten to play around with new and different techniques. 

Could you break down your mood board for us?

Our mood board displays the progression of life cycles. It starts from the top left and moves to the bottom right.  

We start with childhood at the top right. This phase incorporates bright colors and quilts. 

The next phase moves to the self, which is when people find their groove in life. For this phase, we decided to combine our two personal styles, which we would describe as “whimsigoth” and “90s.” We incorporated elements of both, including maxi skirts, heels, puffer coats, and sunglasses. 

The next phase moves to depict death. We symbolized death with a more “corporate”, symmetrical, and organized silhouette, as corporate life and capitalism typically represent a symbolic death of one’s dreams/passions. 

The final phase is rebirth, which is inspired by biblically accurate angels and flowers. We wanted this design to be very ethereal and flowy, with lots of lightweight fabric.