Apr 27

Apr 27 Designer Profile 2022: Kendra Thornburgh-Mueller

Kendra Thornburgh-Mueller is a second year double majoring in Visual Arts and Urban Studies. Apart from sewing, in their free time they can be found working in the woodshop, watching movies at Doc, or hammocking when its warm enough. They are excited for the fashion show this year and can't wait to see what everyone has created!

This is your second year designing; how was your experience coming back?

This year, compared to last year, I’ve been trying to work more on technical skills, like making the pieces more durable. Last year, I feel like I chose difficult fabrics to work with; this year I stuck with easier fabrics to work with, but I tried to make the sewing more wearable. I ended up using cotton, but I used a lot of different colors, which was also different from last year – I wanted my collection to be brighter. I also bleach-dyed a bunch of things once I made them; I was getting frustrated with just solid colors. At first I thought a blockier look would be cool, but then I ended up bleach-dying instead to make more abstract patterns.

What were your sources of inspiration?

Initially, I just got inspiration from Pinterest and going through that. My initial designs followed a fairy tale-type thing – each look would be part of the same world but with different characters. That didn’t totally translate into what I actually made, but with the silhouette of the main dress that I made, it’s still kind of princess-y inspired, but with a more minimal take, not entirely frilly.

Are there any designers that have inspired you?

I really like Charlotte Knowles because I like her design philosophy. When she first start designing, she would just go to thrift stores and find pieces that she liked and then deconstruct them and make entirely new styles. I also really like Yuhan Wang, especially the 2019 Spring show. It’s very colorful, girly, but at the same time, not too plain or done before. There’s this element of deconstructed/reconstructed which I really like.

Can you describe your design process?

I get inspiration from looking at other designers and on Pinterest – all my recommendations are just fashion shows, so I look at those pictures. Also seeing what people are wearing – one of my ideas was just this cool skirt I saw someone wearing. When I’m initially designing, I just tried to get all my ideas out, but when I’m actually sewing, I’m definitely editing down a lot. Making a piece takes a lot of work, a lot more time than you would like, so I have to edit down a lot of my ideas.

What were some challenging aspects of your process?

That was a challenging part, since I have to change a lot of my ideas. My sketches look a lot different from what I actually made. I had to change a lot of things because I realized I just could not make it. And then trying to make everything still look cool when I’m trying to think of what I can actually do with limited time and skillset.