By Casey Dibari & Madison Raffone – Opinion Editor & 1851 Staff
Sarah Gardella helps a student interested in a Lasell University sweatshirt.
Photo by Madison Raffone.
On Thursday, Oct. 3, Studio 1851 held their first pop-up shop of the year since the university transition, in the Glow Lounge at 12:30 p.m. The shop presented their new designs as well as their older ones.
One of the new products was their VINTAGE LASELL Collection, designed by junior Matthew Searth, a fashion merchandising major. The shirts displayed prints of old photographs, retrieved from the university’s archives. One shirt design is black with a polaroid picture of the old Lasell rowing team, with the words “Vintage Lasell” and “Community” printed on it. The second shirt is white with a picture of an old Lasell class on a firetruck with “Vintage Lasell” also printed on it. The idea behind this came from Searth and other students after meeting with the Brennan Library Archives and looking through the different year- books and artifacts they had.
According to Searth, “what stuck out to us was the yearbook photos because it just showed a sense of community and everyone was kind of together.”
FASH409X: Studio 1851 Pop-Up is a course run by Assistant Professor of Fashion Kristin Kin- sky, who said that this was not the first time that they had done the vintage theme in their pop-ups. “Last semester, we did our first vintage t-shirt for Symposium. Which was the firetruck one. We sold out of it immediately,” Kinsky said.
Like the recent pop-up shop, the items either sold out completely or came very close to. Studio 1851 is more than just pop-up shops around campus. It is a class students are invited to be part of, where instead of getting lectured twice a week, they work during the class and their time out of class as well.
According to Kinsky, while Studio 1851 may have recently started, the idea of having a store within the fashion department has been thrown around for at least twenty years. It wasn’t until she suggested the final project idea to her FASH302 Retail Operations class, they came up with a retail store.
“They laid the groundwork. They did some surveys… and they came up with a pretty good plan,” Kinsky said.
Junior fashion merchandising and retail management major Allie Jo Amos is currently taking part in Kinsky’s Studio 1851 class and assisted in the most recent pop-up. “We really want to make this more than just selling and designing clothes. We want to make this as a platform to really support what the students are doing within our community.”
Recently, the black Lasell University hoodies that were sold at the pop-up event had to be taken back due to a mishap with the logo printing. The sweatshirts were made of the wrong material and the logo would not adhere properly. The fashion team managed the issue and sent out an email addressing the matter, asking they be returned to be fixed for free.
“I thought we handled the situation very well and did the best we could with the situation,” said Amos.
With all of their work with their pop-ups, Professor Kinsky mentions they do have a goal in mind. “[Since they started] we’ve just done pop-ups, in hopes of being so amazing that at some point they would give us a physical location… Over this past summer, they gave us they physical location,” Kinsky said.
You can find the new Studio 1851 store in the Spectar classroom located in Winslow on Nov. 21, 2019.
