Meet the fashionable juniors behind Yale’s Y Fashion House

After learning of their shared interest in fashion, juniors Celine Tien and Ermal Hajrizi started Y Fashion House – the only undergraduate organization focused on the fashion industry.

With their debut show set for February, The Tab spoke with the co-presidents about their biggest fashion inspirations, how students can get involved and what they hope to accomplish as the heads of Y Fashion House.

What is Y Fashion House?

Celine: Y Fashion House is Yale undergrad’s only fashion-dedicated organization, and it’s a space for people who are interested in fashion and design to come together and talk about fashion, create events and to eventually be able to design and construct their own clothes. It’s interspersed with the fashion show we hope to hold annually, guest speaker events and design and construction workshops.

How did you come up with this idea?

Ermal: When I first met Celine, we were talking and I said, “Hey, what are you interested in?” She said “fashion” and I was like, “Oh, me too. I have this idea of starting an organization on campus. Do you want to start it with me?”

From there it just happened organically. We put a team together and planned out the details more concretely than we had previously. Now we’re well on our way to have plenty of events.

Do you have any events coming up?

Celine: So, our big event that we hope will establish our presence on campus is our fashion show on February 5th. It will be in the Silliman dining hall and will replicate the shows hosted at Harvard and UChicago every year.

We’ve been in contact with the group at UChicago, and they’ve been helping us with this process. They have a huge show that happens every year. I think they have 3,000 people who attend their show, and it’s at their Union Station – not even on campus. So our first year is obviously not going to be as big as that, but that’s something we’re wanting to scale up to.

What’s the show going to be like?

Celine: So, every year for our show, there’s going to be a different title and theme.

Ermal: The show itself will incorporate designs from Yale students, designers in New Haven, retail stores and designers from other art schools in New York. The clothes will be worn by models who are Yale students, so we’re going to have castings coming up. Anyone who is an interested undergrad can come by and try out.

Celine: They’re on December 5th, 6th, 12th and 13th. We’re really looking for diversity and fun people who want to do this and are interested. Also, the show this year will focus on the intersection of music and fashion, so different styles will be paired with different genres of music.

So do you have a whole team working on the show?

Ermal: Initially it was just me and Celine. Then we expanded a little bit and added two others, Shirley and Leo, and the four of us make up our executive board. After that, we put out applications for the general student body. We got a lot of interest, but unfortunately we had to cut a lot of people.

We ended up taking 11 other people. They’re all very talented and really creative people. They’re separated into departments – artistic direction, event organization, publicity and finance – but they all work together really closely. They all have a big influence on how the show comes together and other events that we plan.

Has the student body been supportive of your idea to have a fashion house at Yale?

Ermal: I think it’s too soon to say. It’s a bit premature, but we’ve had a lot of engagement on our Facebook page.

Celine: I think from the applications alone, we could tell that it is. There’s really not an avenue for people to express or discover an interest in fashion, so this is a great chance for people to try it and really dabble in it because there’s not another space for it on campus.

Ermal: There are similar organizations to this one at Harvard, UChicago and Princeton, and they’ve shown that people are interested in it. Our student body is pretty similar to those schools, so there’s no reason for us not to expect a lot of interest.

Celine: I think the really cool part about this organization is that there are a lot of different departments. If you’re more of an Econ person, you can work for our finance department but still be engaged in the creative process. If you’re really creative and into fashion, you can be involved with pulling clothes and speaking to retailers. Or you can be in event organization, which is more about time and task management. There’s a lot of different components and people that come together whether it’s business or creative.

How can people get involved?

Celine: Look out for us on Facebook and like our page.

Ermal: The first way people can get engaged with us is through our model castings on the 5th, 6th, 12th, and 13th. It’s important for people to know that this isn’t your typical high fashion casting. We’re not looking for the stereotypical super skinny people who have impossible dimensions. We’re really just looking for fun people who want to be a part of it, so there’s definitely no physical requirements. We’re very welcoming of all people.

Celine: We’ve heard some pushback against a fashion show and the industry itself because its a predominantly white industry, usually inspired from European culture. That’s not at all what we want to emphasize. We want to express our passion and show fashion as an art form and way to express yourself. When we’re looking for models, we’re not looking for emaciated-looking people. We’re looking for people who just love themselves and want to express themselves.

So why do you think it’s important for Yale students to have a creative outlet through fashion?

Celine: There’s a pre-existing interest in a lot of students who haven’t been able to express their creativity because there has been no outlet for it. So that’s fulfilling one need. The other is that we’re engaging alumni who are in the fashion industry with undergrads who are interested in it.

We’re hoping to pull in corporate sponsors who have been to Yale and were students here, so that current students can meet them, see what it’s like and maybe even intern. Also, fashion permeates everything we do: how we’re perceived every day, what we choose to wear, what we like as design in our house, what we see in other people aesthetically and how we see the world. It’s an avenue of self-expression and an art form, too.

Where did your love of fashion come from?

Ermal: I think that everyone at some level is interested in fashion because it’s illegal to be naked. I think it’s a fundamental medium in which you can express yourself. Often, what you wear is a reflection of how you want to present yourself that day.

I’ve always been interested in it as an art form since it’s an art form that’s very accessible to the masses. It’s something everyone participates in. I think it’s a form of art where you can take a lot of inspiration from your idols and incorporate it into your daily life.

Kanye is a really big inspiration of mine, but the cool thing about fashion is that you don’t have to be able to afford all these really expensive brands. You can find something similar at a much more manageable price point and still portray a certain lifestyle or aesthetic, which is really cool.

Celine: For me, I grew up in the entertainment industry in L.A., and I’ve been acting since I was really young. One of the ways I started acting was through a modeling agency called Ford Models. That exposed me to a lot of different areas of fashion, but mostly from a model point of view.

There’s a lot of intersection between fashion and acting, so that’s where I first started seeing fashion shows, seeing what people wore to castings and go sees. When I went to the East Coast, I got more interested in it. I’m now a lot closer to New York which is much more of a fashion epicenter than L.A. I’m able to follow more designers and get into the industry more and more.

Who are your style icons?

Ermal: I would say in general I tend to gravitate to streetwear, so Kanye is definitely a big icon of mine. Not only because he does streetwear, but because he does a good job of incorporating different genres of fashion. He might incorporate a brand like Supreme or adidas with very high-end Givenchy. I think a lot of it is just personal taste: what color palettes I like, what silhouettes I like. I connect with him because our tastes match up.

Celine: My mom inspires a lot of my fashion. Whenever I want to try out new things, I go into her closet and try on her clothes because she has a lot of vintage and old stuff from when she was growing up. I love to take stuff and wear it, even though she doesn’t like it when I do. I also draw a lot of inspiration from my heritage: Chinese fashion and traditional clothing, like the qipao. I don’t know if you saw Rihanna at the Met Gala, but that was amazing and was done by a great Chinese designer. I like a lot of Asian influence.