Thriving With Thread

Western alumnus pursues vision in fashion design

STORY BY TARA ALMASSI

For Ivan Tuskan, fashion design is not just his career — it’s his passion. He wakes up every morning in his Brooklyn studio, simply decorated with a large white worktable, black ironing board, a white Juki straight stitch industrial sewing machine and his size 40 mannequin, which he named “Mr. Big.”

Sketches, swatches of fabric and design notes on napkins hang loosely from a large, cork “manifesting mood board.” This board inspires Tuskan as he ventures through the exhausting yet gratifying design process.

Coming up with any clothing design can be a difficult job for any designer, and also can be difficult to verbalize how and where a designer’s inspiration comes from, Tuskan says.

Tuskan, 25, is a Western alumnus and recent graduate of Parsons The New School for Design in New York. Since he was a teenager who admired the current trends of each season, Tuskan has known fashion design was the right career for him. His curiosity has allowed him to blossom into a designer who creates new designs that, to him, represent the future of the fashion industry.

For Tuskan’s senior thesis, he created a collection of seven garments. The main requirement for the project was to create a collection that reflected the designer’s personal style and philosophy in a cohesive theme.

“I fell in love with the idea of the varsity sporty era of the glorified football days, like the [high school] homecoming game,” Tuskan says.

The collection is his twist on what today’s cheerleader should dress like, he says.

Pleated skirts and letterman jackets inspired Tuskan as the basis of his designs.

One of his looks consisted of a jacket made out of lace and neoprene — a synthetic rubber fabric — along with a pleated A-line skirt that flowed gracefully above the knee.

For Tuskan, seeing the celebration in New York after the Seahawks won the Super Bowl also played a role in inspiring this sporty theme.

“[Inspiration] just comes to you when you’re least expecting it,” he says.

Once Tuskan decides on the theme, he furthers his research by looking at fashion and photography books, wandering the streets of New York and visiting his favorite museum, The Museum of Modern Art.

One of Tuskan’s role models is designer Martin Margiela — known for his avant-garde pieces, and experimentation with proportions and fabric.

Tuskan believes studying a designer conceptually by looking at their personal history and past work is more beneficial than replicating their designs.

The key to drawing inspiration from designers such as Margiela is looking at how he gets from an idea on paper to creating the actual garment, Tuskan says.

Designers must appeal to their consumer, but also stand out from the rest, he says.

“I love seeing new brands make it, and bring something new to the industry,” says Western senior Fikison Balogun.

Also a designer, Balogun says fashion has always played a large role in his life. Like Tuskan, he sketches and creates designs in his free time, playing around with and gaining inspiration from current trends of the season.

Tuskan’s initial sketches are often doodles on napkins and notebook paper.

“I’m a little old fashioned, and I like to draw all my fashion figures on paper and render them,” he says.

Tuskan likes to render his sketches in an “anime-esque” manner by using bold colors and lines and not too much shading. Rendering allows the designer to depict what the garment will look like when it is complete.

Tuskan then considers fabric, silhouette, color lines, shape and the construction process. He consistently uses neoprene and denim in all of his collections.

Once Tuskan has completed his designs, he needs to bring his sketch to life. There are two ways to transform a design into a three-dimensional object, he says.

The first approach is creating a pattern. Designers can use pre-made pattern and alter it to the new design, or they can create their own pattern using tissue-like paper.

An alternative to using patterns is draping. Tuskan uses muslin — cheap, unbleached, loosely woven cotton — to position and pin onto a mannequin and develop the structure of the garment design.

Designers compare this process to sculpting, since it requires the designer to smooth, crease, splice and pin until the desired shape is achieved.

Western junior Chloe Borba used draping when she decided to make her own prom dress for her high school senior project.

“Draping can be very helpful when creating dresses,” Borba says. “It allows you to see how the fabric will hang and make sure it cinches at the waist properly.

After draping his garments, Tuskan creates his own pattern. Once he has created his pattern, he cuts and measures all the pieces of fabric, then sews them together.

“You have to be very precise with your measurements, or else your garment will look like a defect,” Tuskan says.

Once the garment is sewn together, he creates facings — iron-on materials that add structure to the garment. This stiffens the fabric and allows the garment to be smooth and fitted.

Throughout the sewing process, Tuskan presses his garment frequently to ensure the fabric doesn’t wrinkle.

For Tuskan, it typically takes about three days to drape and create the pattern of the garment, followed by one day of sewing and tending to the final touches.

After attending Parsons, Tuskan had the opportunity to intern for fashion designer Vera Wang. Throughout the internship, his work ranged from sewing a loose button on a garment to assisting the design team with sketches.

Working for a designer like Vera Wang allowed Tuskan to have real-world experience as a designer for a global label, he says.

Tuskan’s end goal is to have his own women’s wear line, which he would like to call “Tuskan.” He will use his self-titled theme of “Brooklyn cool meets Manhattan chic” to dress women around the world.

“I just want my voice to be heard, and my vision to be seen,” Tuskan says.

Tuskan recently attended a banquet where he won Designer of The Year for women’s wear out of four nominees in his program at Parsons.

He was able to create his dream collection for the “Tuskan ” girl, he says.

Finishing the final touches on his garment, Tuskan spends hours in his studio pinning, sewing and pressing each piece of fabric. The garment drapes from his mannequin, and becomes seamless as he cuts the final thread.