Meet the 14-year-old fashion designer from North Potomac
A yr ago, Chloe Ayissi-Etoh didn’t know how to sew. But this spring, in a university auditorium packed with extra than 900 individuals, the teenager soaked in thunderous applause as a bona fide vogue designer.
In a crimson gown she’d finished perfecting just minutes previously, Chloe followed styles who’d walked the phase at Walter Johnson Substantial School in Bethesda in nine appears to be from her initial selection, under her model chlolanà—a blend of her initially identify and center identify, Alana.
For Chloe, an eighth grader at the time, the trend display was a important accomplishment. What built it even much more remarkable was that she’d experienced just 4 weeks to style and design, sew and match the attire, pants, shirts and corsets she’d sketched for numerous physique sorts. The exhibit was held for the duration of a retreat for the Minority Students Application, a team led by Montgomery County Community Universities college students that’s performing to close the accomplishment hole.
“I did not have time to even sleep—I bought amongst two and four hours a night time,” says Chloe, 14, who life in North Potomac and attended Robert Frost Center Faculty in Rockville. “It was incredibly busy, but if I’m established on one thing, I’m likely to do it no matter of what any one claims and no make any difference how crazy it appears.”
The trend demonstrate was so properly received that it attained an encore overall performance two months afterwards as portion of Robert Frost’s 50th anniversary celebration. Robert Frost science trainer Sunila Varghese, who co-sponsors the school’s chapter of the Minority Students Software and has recognized Chloe for two years, notes that the teen managed two assistants and two make-up artists all through the show, and also choreographed walks for the types, all fellow classmates.
“You could listen to a gasp when the [audience] listened to she was 14. My heart was just entire,” Varghese suggests. “She’s a very bright and talented woman, and what ever she does, she’s a rock star at it.”
Chloe, a increasing ninth grader at Wootton Significant University in Rockville, describes her aesthetic as primarily monochrome with a pop of color—“a combination of streetwear and stylish.” She attracts inspiration from style makes together with London designer Dwelling of CB, recognised for its determine-hugging items.
Chloe grew to become fascinated in fashion in June 2021 just after receiving into thrift-retail store buying and seeing TikTok video clips about upcycling dresses. She quickly started out using sewing classes from an aunt. Innumerable hrs on YouTube adopted as she soaked up sewing and manner terminology.
At the time university began that fall, Chloe states, she no extended wanted to don sweats and hoodies to class. She immediately turned recognised for her individual designs, even earning a “Best Dressed” award from fellow eighth graders in a scholar study. “For some rationale, I just turned a fashionista,” she suggests. “I would go into my closet, search at some apparel, place collectively an outfit, and it would transform out wonderful.”
Just mainly because she’s no longer putting on sweats and hoodies in the hallways does not indicate Chloe never ever attire down. But even then, she suggests, she puts a spin on her search. “Honestly, it depends on my temper,” she states. “If I feel excess that working day, I’ll build a definitely additional outfit for that working day at school—maybe spice factors up with some higher-waisted flare trousers and [a] turtleneck with an below-bust corset.”
Describing the process of deconstructing a garment as “beautiful,” Chloe previously this year took out a zipper and ripped up the seams of a pair of stretchy pink shorts she bought for $2 at a thrift shop. She then extra interfacing and produced an underneath-bust corset she from time to time wears to school over a white costume shirt. “My mom does not like that I have such a major obsession with corsets,” she admits.
Her mother, Katrina, 45, states she endures regular style guidance from Chloe, her only daughter among the 4 children. “She does ask if she can model and dress me, but I convey to her, ‘No, get out of my closet. I’m high-quality,’ ” Katrina claims. “But maybe this summer months I’ll talk to her to make me a shirt.”
Chloe designs to grow to be a designer with her individual line of middle- to higher-stop ready-to-dress in clothes. She suggests she finds inspiration almost everywhere and recollects once devising a coloration-blocked streetwear glimpse from a ladder propped towards a wall in French course. She is changing a basement storage place at her house into a stitching studio with gentle pink walls, white tables, loads of green plants, and a signal bearing her manufacturer name.
Katrina, in the meantime, is trying to reconcile that the daughter she has observed hop from just one interest to the next—though Chloe still loves to bake and cook—now seems committed to a foreseeable future in manner. “The Lord must function in mysterious means,” she claims. “Never did I see this one particular coming. … She enjoys what she does, and you simply cannot obtain that.”