Once the school day made way for quiet night, all but three SCAD Fashion Design students remained. It was a late winter evening in Atlanta, the sort where dusk stretches out into the bluish hours of the afternoon, as if a reminder of the following day’s fast approach. Sewing well into the early morning, the trio of design juniors worked away at their final projects of the quarter. They were tasked with creating a full look in final fabric, as an embodiment of their design ethos and precursor to the collection they would develop as seniors for Savannah College of Art and Design’s juried fashion show.
"I remember us staying up all night making these looks,” recent design graduate Mariana Robledo tells Teen Vogue, reflecting on the evening in early 2024 and the friendship that bloomed from it. “We were the only three people in the room, sewing until the last minute. We had classes before, but it wasn’t until [this one night] that we bonded more,” she says of her classmates Sanaa Venkateswar and Karla Santiago. As the three young designers worked away on their junior concepts, they recall seeing the seniors pop in and out to build on their final runway collections, realizing this too would be their fate.
Now class of 2025 graduates, Robledo, Venkateswar, and Santiago have pulled the all-nighters, poured their weeks and schedules into their collections, made their runway debuts, and have the first summer as graduates ahead. This is the sort of full-circle moment that makes a college student’s — a fashion student’s, especially — final year quite tender and all the more meaningful. Below, Teen Vogue followed the trio throughout the process, to understand what it takes to create a lineup — and what it means to those who do.
We first spoke with the three designers in early March, just as SCAD’s winter quarter was coming to an end. The frost in Atlanta had finally begun to thaw, giving way to warmer days and increased focus on the senior fashion students’ final collections.
Last summer, the students began making their toiles, then focused all of the fall quarter and winter break on prototypes. To Robledo, picking up where junior concept development classes left off was an ongoing process, much more slow-moving than she could have ever imagined. “I’m still in the exploration stage. I hate to say it: I thought I’d be moving on to making final garments but am playing around with what could look good enough as a lineup,” she admitted.
When it came to the senior collection, students had near total creative freedom as to what visual and thematic directions to move in, so long as they produced at least five, cohesive looks. Moving at her own pace, Robledo’s collection pays homage to her formative years by reimagining pieces she wore as a child in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, from oversized puffer jackets to her mom’s old clothing. “I didn’t care what anyone said about a 10-year-old wearing random clothes,” she explained, and that distinct, pre-teen confidence is what drove her ultra-tailored, dress-uppy silhouettes with a surrealist twist.
“I’m always getting ahead of myself [with] how much work I have to do, when I should focus on tackling a few things at a time,” she continued, trying to channel her younger self. “In the end, I want to be proud of showing up every day, not just for the jury or my professors but also for myself, because this collection tells my story of growing up.”
To the early design process, pacing was key. Having a strong concept was foundational for a cohesive collection, even if actual construction had been a tad delayed. “I’ve just realized you could never have a set path,” Venkateswar explained of her womenswear design plan, which she felt was perpetually in flux. Having grown up in the beachside city of Muscat, Oman, she spent much of her childhood by the water, collecting seashells and any other trinkets that washed upon the shore. The ebb and flow of tides and chance encounters with its offerings set the tone for her pleat-heavy collection, titled “Bioform.”
“I want the garments to move the way I feel moved when I’m by the sea,” she explained, insisting upon using well-tailored muslin, a fabric often reserved for the process, as her final material with Swarovski pearl accessories. Though a lack of creative constraint could have seemed overwhelming, Venkateswar approached the freedom with curiosity, giving herself grace before shutting down or sacrificing any idea too quickly. “If you’ve lived by the sea, you know you abide by what the sea says. Let’s see where this takes me,” she elaborated.
For fellow senior Karla Santiago, reminding herself of all of the labor behind her collection, especially as the school year ramped up, kept her grounded and going. “Every critique we have, I’m just a bundle of stress and nerves. But the professors know me [and] know I’ve put in the work to make this collection,” she told herself. Raised in Georgia, she vividly recalls her father unwinding after work with classic Mexican films every night as a child, mesmerized by the dramatic suits worn by celluloid legends such as Pedro Infante. This costuming — at once flamboyant and uber-masculine — became Santiago’s point of inspiration, paired with her aunts’ and extended family’s tradition of crocheting.
On a trip to Mexico a year ago, she was surprised by how at home she felt in a place so personally unfamiliar, yet rich in family history. After meeting her aunts in person for the first time, one of them gave Santiago delicate crochet blankets. “I practiced beforehand to meet her, but her expertise is beyond words,” she said. Whether it be cinema or crochet, the dedication to one’s craft pushed her own work ethic.
The three friends were still finding the precise language to describe their collections, especially as they’d all sprouted from personal experience. Brainstorming and rough sketches had made way for construction, but when it came to final execution, there were many decisions to be made over their five looks and overall cohesion. This in-between stage was rife with adjusting to new routines, and with the pre-runway jury on May 2, fashion show on May 16, and end of semester still far enough ahead to seem abstract, a shared sense of anticipation was slowly underway.
Spring break typically evokes beachside trips and sleeping in, but for the fashion design seniors, it’s valuable time to make use of the school facilities when classes are out. With students delegating space amongst one another and heavy traffic in and out of the sewing labs, it was easy to forget there was any end-of-March break to begin with.
Venkateswar worked out of her dorm, Robledo was in the classroom, and Santiago transformed her family’s home living room into a makeshift sewing studio. With the help of her siblings, she moved two dining tables together, which became the site for cut fabric, crochet swatches, cyanotype ingredients, and more. While some of her classmates were able to get to their collections right after class, most days, Santiago worked five- to seven-hour barista shifts, making the week-long break especially valuable. “It’s been a true learning experience of how to juggle everything all at once,” she admitted.
Well along the way of construction, Santiago’s focus on cyanotype printing with her crochet doilies, which took some trial and error to get just right. The crochet silhouettes should have been a crisp white but came out muddied, so she started the process over again, leaving her garments out in the sun. “I’ve got to keep going. I don’t really have time to mourn,” she said. “It’s a learning process and I’m not going to always get it right.”
As the students problem-solved and narrowed their vision for their collections, the language used to describe them also became much more concrete. “Spring break is not so much about sewing and strictly finishing looks [as it is] looking at a bigger picture. Am I portraying what I’m trying to say with my concept? Do I need to change any colors or focus more on styling?” Robledo asked herself, as she debated which accessories to include in her lineup. “You can take your collection anywhere, it just depends on what you want to do later on in your career.”
There was a shift from thinking about possibility to practicality, especially as students geared up for jury: A panel of industry designers, directors, and writers who would be interviewing them on their work to decide which collections would get the runway treatment. “People can see your collection, but can you talk about it?,” Robledo posed.
Venkateswar remedied this question by reframing her very approach to presentation. “I’m tapping into the fact I’m making this out of something I’ve experienced and lived through,” she said. Describing one’s collection was no foreign concept, because in one way or another, each of the three designers had spoken of these ideas in so many different ways before. It was a matter of relaying this closeness to the jurors.
“At this point, [Karla, Mariana, and I] are quite telepathic. We’ve been around each other for so long. You just know when someone’s struggling and you’re like, ‘Let’s take a break, get some coffee, go for a walk,'” Venkatsewar said. Keeping each other in check, especially with the jury fast approaching, while offering a shoulder to lean on kept the trio going.
As the school year and its many deadlines were wrapping up in May, the three prepared for a quiet summertime lull: a sudden, albeit well-deserved, pause. “What do I do next? I always feel like that when I go home over the break, but I’ve realized I can just sit and relax,” Robledo says, though she still wonders what exactly it means to be still for a moment, especially after the monumental runway and rush and the push of her last few months. “I’m going to try to get my sleep schedule back to normal,” Venkateswar answers, laughing a bit. Both she and Robledo are most looking forward to resuming their pre-senior year routines and regularly spending time with friends, especially as the summer ensues and early-career job searches lie ahead.
With a clearer vision of their design aesthetics and workflow, they’re certainly not the same designers they were that fabled winter night in junior year, but some aspects remain the same. “It’s funny to see how things have evolved from concept. I still see hints of each other’s [ideas]: Sanaa was already playing around with pleats, and Mariana with her beadwork,” Santiago reflects. Each designer has a signature detail setting her apart from the other, but across all three, an exploration of heritage and one’s childhood self are as strong as ever. Venkateswar has her muslin-blends, shells, and seaside treasures from her hometown in Oman; Robledo’s design sketchbook looks more like a family album rich with childhood photos; and Santiago has a new, growing assortment of crochet swatches from her aunts in Mexico.
For many of the 52 designers on the runway, the show was a rare moment for them to design for themselves — a testament to what a young designer can do, if only given the time and resources. For Robledo, Venkateswar, and Santiago, it has allowed them to reconnect with rich histories both personal and familial, invented and inherited. Perhaps that’s what the final collection comes down to: Returning to the past as a way to move forward.
