The students in the Advanced Fashion and Fabrics classes had been given a festive assignment: making a holiday dress for display at the Savvy Chic Boutique in Grosse Pointe Park.

Lanna Young, the store owner, was looking for something to put on display that would attract the attention of whoever walks by. Finding it too difficult to make time and find the right materials, she found out about the Fashion and Fabrics class through English teacher Allison Dunn, and decided to give them the assignment of designing a dress.

“I talked to Ms. (Krzyminski) about it at first,” Dunn said. “She said that the class would be willing to design a dress specifically for the store around the store’s color schemes and their target audience.”

The dress is made for the season, but is based off of the stores main colours, white and purple, instead of red and green. It is different from the others at the boutique because of the materials—it was created using fake branches, twigs covered with artificial snow and ornaments.

The main masterminds behind the creation of the dress are seniors Maddie Mcconkey, Stephanie Roy, Katie Snow, Katherine Troost, Madison Delas and Grace Emerick. They made the dress in 30 minutes.

 “It turned out a lot better than we thought it would be,” Roy said. “For being done in such a short amount of time, it turned out really well.”
To most people, working on a dress fit for the display case would mean hours of designing, measuring and planning. But for the creators, it was more fun than stressful.

Everyone involved felt that the project was beneficial for the class and the school itself because it allowed the students to showcase their talents on a community level, and anyone who sees it will know what those kids can do.

“I think it’s cool that everybody who walks around it are going to see it and see that we made that all together,” Snow said.

Stacy Krzyminski, the Fashion and Fabrics teacher, wasn’t expecting to do a project on this scale. She had tree dresses in her room and the main office, but she didn’t think it would attract attention.

“Quite honestly, this was kind of out of left field for me,” Krzyminski said. “I didn’t expect anyone to actually want to take them.”

Krzyminski said she wants to expand the project to include more locations around the community and let more of her students work on it.

“Next year I want to do more so I can break them up so it’s not one big group, that they can do maybe two or three of them,” Krzyminski said. “I would love to expand it to more businesses on Mack and throughout the whole Grosse Pointe community.”