Student Fashion Show Draws Rave Reviews

Aspiring clothing designer Laura L. Mehlinger '01 showcased her creations at the first campus fashion show by a Harvard student Saturday night.

The production, held in the Pforzheimer House dining hall, featured 12 Harvard models and more than 50 designs created by Mehlinger.

To hold the show, Mehlinger and her team first had to convince the Pforzheimer House Masters that the show would be tamer than last year's Black Students Association-sponsored "Eleganza," a fashion show which featured outside designers.

The masters stipulated that models have underwear on at all times, a request with which Mehlinger said she found it easy to comply--her main passion is lingerie.

The models displayed the fashions to music mixed by W. David Marx '01, which he described as "half stuff only I would know or have [and] half stuff people might know."

Among the most notable outfits were a pair of "green butt pants," as tech designer Christian Lerch '04 called them; a short, pink, shiny cocktail dress (its model, Dionne N. Harmon '01, apparently refused to take it off); and a back-less dress with train and red bodice.

The show also included the dress Mehlinger wore to her Dunster House formal last year. She said the short dress, trimmed with red feathers and two red circles over the breasts, garnered a lot of attention.

"People were confused," she said. "They'd say, 'You look so pretty.' I was like, 'That's not the effect I'm going for.'"

The last piece was a "tongue-in-cheek take-off of the traditional wedding gown," Mehlinger said--a dress made of 11 contact sheets dotted with fashion photographs.

The often outrageous ensembles elicited catcalls, applause and unanticipated personal orders. Mehlinger said she would respond to e-mail requests, though she is not looking to sell.

The audience, made up mostly of friends of Mehlinger and her staff, responded warmly to the designs.

"I was slightly scandalized," said Ankit B. Patel '02, "in a good way."

B.J. Novak '01, one of Mehlinger's friends, praised the show for having "displayed Laura's sense of humor."

He called the show the natural development of her personal fashion.

"Whenever you see her on the street and complement something she's wearing, she's always like, 'Oh yeah, I made it,'" he said.

Mehlinger claims her passion for designing began "as soon as I could hold a needle."

At five, she remembers making pillows and doll's dresses. She later worked with patterns and eventually moved on to her own designs in her senior year of high school.

Though Mehlinger is uncertain about her future plans, she is attracted to the idea of creating her own lingerie label.

Mehlinger began sewing for the show in October, but had to "push my thesis work aside" for the past two months, when preparations for the collection could take up to 15 hours a day.

"Laura would come in with four new dresses she'd made overnight," said model Alexandra L. Fazio '01. "We had this sleeve floating about for a while, then one day, she'd transformed it into a dress."

That particular creation was a universal favorite among the models and staff. The notorious sleeve was made of sheer black fabric, and extended well past the hand. The other arm was left bare, with a simple black fabric making up the dress.

The dress was even noted in the Boston Globe article devoted to Mehlinger the day following the show.

Mehlinger's parents flew in from Arlington, Va. for the event.

"My father went crazy," Mehlinger said. "He bought 50 copies of all the papers mentioning me."