Fashion Action
Designer Gwen Beloti last year unveiled the social action project in which she encourages young women to embrace their education and strive for success by celebrating their diligence with a piece of garment from the Beloti Collection.
Think back on high school. Have you ever been rewarded with a beautiful dress from a designer because he or she recognized your effort and good grades? Most of us probably haven’t. But at the start of this new year, students at James Madison High School of Brooklyn, New York, are eligible for an opportunity like this with indie designer Gwen Beloti’s Fashionably Smart, Literally Initiative. The 27-year-old designer launched her eponymous line in 2007, and last year unveiled the social action project in which she encourages young women to embrace their education and strive for success by celebrating their diligence with a piece of garment from the Beloti Collection.
The designer herself finished high school at the age of 16 and started attending college right after. As a girl who succeeded at school, the young Beloti paid equal attention to style and trends as well as to her peers who were less like her.
“I would see [that] other people who struggled assumed that if you got good grades, or [were] really smart, really ambitious, that you couldn’t also be ‘fly’ as they called it, or couldn’t be stylish,” Beloti says.
That perhaps was what sparked the concept for Fashionably Smart, Literally. The prize is given to students graduating in the top percentile of their class and overcoming adversities. It is Beloti’s hope that with this initiative, young women would start to understand that they can be both stylish and intelligent at the same time.
A Brooklyn native, Beloti graduated with a master’s degree in psychology but decided to go into fashion on an impulse. She later went to the Fashion Design Training Studio in New Jersey, a relatively small school equipped with faculty members some of whom are ex-Fashion Institute of Technology instructors, where she learned all the necessary skills for her to embark on a new career path.
“[The school] was very intimate, very hands-on. If you needed to stay after hours on a weekend, somebody was always there,” Beloti says. “That’s exactly what I needed, coming right out of a graduate program. I needed something that was more attentive to my personal needs.”
Armed with an innate aesthetic sense and a potent skill set, Beloti transitioned into fashion with ease. Or as she puts it, it wasn’t so much a transition at all, because hey, people use psychology every day; it has become the base of her daily life. And then there is the muse, or at least this muse would like to think that he was influential to some extent in his baby girl’s career choice. Yes, the man is Beloti’s father, Vincent Miller. Miller has a label of his own named C. Fitz, which features men’s tailored shirts.
“My father tends to believe that he’s the reason why I’m into fashion because he’s always a stylish person,” Beloti says.
Indeed Miller’s style sense was validated a few years back when he was featured in Esquire. And this love for fashion is most likely genetic.
“For as long as I remember, from elementary school up, I always wanted what was hot, what was in,” Beloti says. “I also wanted to remix everything. I wanted my stuff to look slightly different than everybody else’s.”
Now that Beloti is all grown up, she has a more specific idea as to what looks good on a body, especially a woman’s body, which is the source of her inspiration when it comes to designing her collections.
“I’m really just inspired by the female figure, how well clothes can fit a woman if she dresses appropriately for her body, how well the right design of the sleeve can go with the collar, or the right trend added to a garment to make it go from simple to this outlandish outfit,” Beloti says.
The look, the feel, the fit — these are the things that Beloti looks out for as she draws, cuts, and sews. The most important element, however, is color.
“I happen to be a firm believer in color,” the designer says. “I think it’s something you should celebrate, something that you should have fun with.”
Cocktail dresses come in hot pink, golden yellow, fiery red, and multicolor blocks. Beloti is bold in her choice of hues and every piece looks like a passionate gesture toward the female shopper.
“Life is short. Every chance you get, dress up,” Beloti says. “Whether it’s at the movies, church, at work, at a meeting, just have fun with style and design, just make the best of every opportunity you get, to just dress up.”
(Photo credit: Gwen Beloti)
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Unfortuantely, many of the inner city youth from troubled communities are misguided by cash money hoes rappers. It has become ever more confusing for them to distinguish the importance between an education and looking “fly.“
Her project sounds awesome…;)
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