Miami University College of Creative Arts Department of Fashion
Miamian Feature Story
Architecture graduate Azmara Asefa '08 designs clothing as armor for women bravely taking on the twenty-four hour period'southward demands
By Betsa Marsh
Azmara Asefa '08 as a typical tourist in Barcelona? You tin can bet your booties and your moto jacket she's really on a mission, past pattern.
The T-shirt and shorts might be textbook tourist, snapped on a sunbaked day in forepart of Barcelona'southward La Sagrada Familia Cathedral. But not the white sunglasses or the sleeked-back cloud of curls, and certainly not the determined jut of the jaw and the assuming look to the left.
Artillery akimbo, Azmara Asefa '08 appears to have staked her claim earlier the cathedral's interminable construction site, begun by builder Antoni Gaudí in 1882 and destined for completion — sometime. Maybe 2026, a century after Gaudí's death.
| College of Creative Arts in Manner The founding president was compages + interior design alumna Nikki Martinkovic '09, and before and since then, a number of the CCA's compages and interior design students accept made their style into some attribute of the fashion industry, amidst them, Azmara Asefa. After only four semesters, the minor now has more than 160 students, with two full-time fashion faculty, Leslie Stoel and Della Reams. "They're leading the development of new curriculum," Ewing says, "and a newly renovated studio in Boyd Hall on the Western campus." |
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In this one stance, fellow builder Asefa tells the camera that a century may be fine for Gaudí, but she has realms to conquer — now. "Apocalypse ready" is the slogan of her fashion line, and Asefa wants to outfit women as futuristic warriors prepared to accept on the world immediately outside their doors.
"Architecture is dull," Asefa muses, "and y'all might not see the fruits of your labor until months or years after. With fashion, I can think it in i day, design the prototype the next, and have instant gratification.
"I love creating a new world, whether information technology's a building, room, or outfit."
After vii years in architecture, Asefa is all in with fashion. Her brand thrives online at azmaraasefa.com and in pop-up shows that travel with her between her base in Los Angeles and her family dwelling in Columbus.
Designing for women warriors
"Designing is designing," she says from her Los Angeles office, "whether information technology's a building, a dress, or graphics. It's still procedure, starting with words, which plough into images, which turn into sketches."
Now, rather than designing museum displays or retail spaces, she's outfitting young modern warriors in laser-cut neoprene crop tops, leather moto jackets, and her best-seller, the woolen Sack Dress that she claims tin be worn "a ba-zillion means." She'due south been known to apply a bit of wood veneer and DuPont Tyvek also.
Her clients are women in their 30s and 40s, "get-getters and self-starters." They often work in the arts and culture sectors and live in or identify with major cities.
"They're empowered and looking for something interesting. They might have their own mini-apocalypses, and I equip them to bravely take on the 24-hour interval and all its challenges."
She even tucks secret exhortations into her designs. Her light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation-cut wood cuff is inscribed in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia: "Take on the day."
Apocalyptic motifs echo through Asefa's life, back to her babyhood as the girl of an Ohio female parent and an Ethiopian father.
"My begetter left Ethiopia in the '80s, at a really tumultuous time in its history, and I had a lot of aunts and uncles coming, seeking aviary. During my upbringing, I was amazed by their resilience, and apocalypse is a metaphor for that.
"Anybody in the family unit is an entrepreneur and they made the American dream work for them."
Each family member spent time in refugee camps earlier arriving in America, sparking a mission within Asefa.
"I grew up with people who were refugees, and they didn't like to talk well-nigh the experience. When I was doing my thesis for my master'due south in architecture at the University of Cincinnati, I created wearable architecture for the Horn of Africa, and then that people in a crisis refugee situation could carry their shelter on their backs. This alerted me to the issues that women refugees accept in the camps, with pregnancies and vulnerability to rape."
10 percent of her sales become to the nonprofit Women's Refugee Commission.
Armed for the Apocalypse
Will it be the fabulous Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse cresting the horizon, their steeds roiling war, dearth, pestilence, and expiry in their wake? Or Ten-Men'southward Apocalypse, the ferocious, red-eyed shapeshifter?
Or, God forbid, zombies?
"Zombies are my to the lowest degree favorite apocalypse," Azmara Asefa '08 reveals. "Dauntless New World is one of my favorite books. In that location's Clockwork Orange for the criminalized future. I'g looking at the dystopian future."
No matter how the end begins, Asefa wants her clients looking formidable. "Apocalypse means that something tragic or crazy has just happened. 'Congratulations, you survived. How are you going to make the best of the new state of affairs?'
"You might not experience violent, but yous can habiliment an outfit that is."
For Asefa, information technology's only a thing of a few quality pieces to be apocalypse-gear up:
Your own signature apparel is the foundation of the arsenal. This is a dress that non simply looks great on y'all, simply expresses who you are.
A power jacket, 1 that you can throw on any outfit. It tin can exist a moto jacket or a sleek blazer.
Shoes! Having a standard bootie is dandy because it works with so many outfits and can give a little border.
Jewelry. Having one statement piece is the mode to go, bringing it out of the arsenal occasionally. If it has a story behind it, that'southward even better. A lot of great conversations offset around jewelry.
Mastering her own pattern
She spotlights other philanthropic companies on her website and looks for sustainability in her business organisation practices. Her principal manufacturing plant is in LA, where people are "paid adequately and have nice working conditions." She's considering a off-white-trade factory in Republic of bolivia for her knits. Her goal is an ethical fashion brand.
Asefa's refugee roots have propelled her since she first learned the meaning of her given name, Azmara: "Skillful harvest." "My dad came hither, raising a whole generation of people who could live successful lives. My parents put and then much effort into this that I need to push farther, to brand something greater. That'due south at the core of what I do."
It was Asefa's first trip to Ethiopia that showed her the path. "I was historic period seven, and that'due south when I decided I wanted to exist an architect. We were going over a span at Bahir Dar to run into the waterfall that's the source of the Nile, and it was rickety. I think thinking, 'It would be and so cool if I could design a really cool bridge and a space where people would desire to hang out.' I didn't know what an builder was, simply I knew I wanted to do that."
With her parents' back up, she expanded her drafting, stepped upwards her math, and prepared for architecture — all while in middle schoolhouse. When a friend who'd chosen Miami for marketing mentioned that MU was also ranked for architecture, Asefa perked up. The architecture program was attractive, yes, merely what sold the idea was a Summit twenty ranking for the cafeteria food.
"The food was really good," Asefa confirms with enthusiasm a decade later, meals which fueled her major in compages and small in entrepreneurship.
She pigeon into the blueprint classes — "then much fun" — then learned how to continue buildings standing during the technical classes. Elective studios in the business of compages and cultural architecture capped off her undergraduate work.
"I actually liked when we went to Oklahoma," Asefa says, "to build a cultural center for the Miami Tribe."
Jubilant differences
Information technology was during that challenge that "the things she looked into told you lot a lot about Azmara," recalls Gail Della-Piana, an creative person and acquaintance professor emerita in compages. "It was how she described the site, how the materials were environmentally appropriate for the tribe, and how the blueprint would complement the needs of the tribe. She sees difference in very positive ways, as something to be celebrated."
Following Asefa's career, Della-Piana finds information technology "phenomenal that someone with a master'south in architecture is focused on the trunk, on materials that are sustainable. She can look at structures she needs to make, then create movement and fluidity."
Many of Asefa's designs spark a simpatico spirit with her fellow architects.
"It's the very clean lines and the well-baked breaks between materials and colors," says lecturer J.Eastward. Elliott '73, who taught Asefa during her second-yr blueprint studio. "There's a clarity to the designs that other people don't take."
Jewelry designer Susan Ewing gravitates to Asefa's innovations, working with neoprene, for instance, and light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation cutting. Associate dean emerita of the College of Artistic Arts and Distinguished Professor, Ewing oversaw the new style minor until she retired this semester. Asefa was graduated earlier the minor began in 2013 but was active in the Miami University Lodge of Fashion and Design that led the way to the minor. She worked the rails as both designer and model.
"I peculiarly dearest her dramatic employ of 'aptitude and folded' fabrics and forms," Ewing says.
Beyond bookish acclaim, Asefa was one of just 13 competitors in the Emerging Designer Bootcamp during Phoenix Manner Week 2015. "That was a really difficult four months," Asefa recalls. "It was focused on making you lot a successful way make."
When invitee double-decker Kym Gold challenged the designers to create an outfit for her, it was Asefa who won the day: a one-piece version of her ain iconic piece, the Sack Clothes.
"Of all the designers I saw at Phoenix Fashion Calendar week, Azmara was the nearly detail-oriented," says Gold, a fashion entrepreneur who co-created Truthful Religion jeans. "She has a real perspective, a vision."
Envisioning high-tech trends
Asefa looks ahead, envisioning collections a year in advance. She wants to link fashion and tech more closely, with more 3-D printing and light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation cutting in an art-driven style. Her clothes might become reportive, maybe in the Fitbit mode.
"I accept two friends who are significant, and they both wanted Sack Dresses. A dress could tell a pregnant woman the vitals of her kid.
"There's all this cool stuff happening in fashion, and information technology's not about the Kardashians."
She and her staff sell online, meet with stylists, and cultivate Hollywood exposure. She might even create a physical store — she knows an builder for that.
Asefa's laser-focused on the Met Gala, a spectacle for New York'southward Metropolitan Museum that's one of the year'southward pinnacle fashion moments. The '16 theme seems a cinch: fashion and tech. "I'd beloved to dress someone for that."
There might even be more architecture alee. "Someone called my father and asked if I'd like to design a church. I'm even so in all those worlds, because to me way and compages aren't that dissimilar."
It helps to exist 29, but Asefa also calls upon her college years. "One thing I learned at Miami is that I only demand four hours of sleep. Architecture school prepares you for that. I didn't slumber for three days to stop my high-ascension studio project."
She'southward inspired past Japanese designer Issey Miyake and Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize. "I often think 'What would Zaha Hadid wear?' "
Facing both the goal board and procedure board in her LA role, Asefa wants to "brand things bigger and requite back more." She wants to aid the clemency Imagine1Day build schools in Ethiopia.
Whether it'due south clothes, buildings, or opportunities for people she'southward never met, Asefa says, "I see something that's not there and make that for myself."
Betsa Marsh wrote about eliminating homelessness amid veterans in the Autumn 2015 Miamian.
For more than information
Contact Donna Boen '83 MTSC '96, editor of Miamian, at Miamian@MiamiOH.edu or 513-529-7592.
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Miamian, Miami Academy's alumni magazine, highlights alumni, student, faculty, and staff interest with the University, updating readers on campus news and events, arts, sports, and alumni news. Miami's primary communication link with alumni and shut friends of the University, the magazine sets out to inform and entertain while generating a sense of noesis and involvement with Miami University. Miamian is published two times a year.
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