FACS Students Curate Artistic Window Displays
Getting the real experience needed for a future career can be tough. Family and consumer science students have the opportunity to advance their skills that will be vital in the future before them — the chance to create their own window display from scratch.
In FACS 423, students are encouraged to dig deep into their biggest inspirations and channel them into the window display. Each student in the class will have the chance to design a display, and the projects will be shown for about a week.
FACS professor Kim Cashman said that this class provides students with real life experience and hopes that it brings out new creativity in students. Cashman loves seeing her students start with an idea on paper and bring it to life.
In the most recent window displays, students Vivian Underwood and Ingrid Lindevaldsen had the chance to bring their visions to life.
Lindevaldsen is a senior studying fashion merchandising. Her passion for fashion grew during her freshman year of college when she learned that Liberty had a Family and Consumer Sciences Department.
When it came to the beginning stages of this display, Lindevaldsen knew she wanted a more editorial piece. Her display shows a huge skirt, and on the skirt, there are large flowers made from an unlikely material. Rather than a fabric, Lindevaldsen used tissue paper, a concept inspired by her mother’s stories about making tissue paper flowers when she was a child. Paired with the dress, students can see other elements like floating vases and fairy lights in Lindevaldsen’s display meant to create a garden feel.
Lindevaldsen started to create this design at the beginning of the school year and drafted the design closer to the time of her display date.
“Once I started making the tissue paper flowers, it took about a month,” Lindevaldsen said. “I just tried to make a few each day until it was done.”
Lindevaldsen prepared in other ways by going to Goodwill and thrifting the vases and selecting pieces to upcycle into the dress shown in the display. Once it was time to put the display together, Lindevaldsen did not realize how long this would take. Arriving at DeMoss Hall around noon on a Saturday, she did not leave until 5 a.m. on Sunday.
Underwood, designer of the second window display, is also a senior studying fashion design. Underwood originally wanted to go to a fashion school but felt that the Lord was calling her to Liberty.
“People really don’t see fashion as a form of ministry,” Underwood said. “That is just not the case. God created us to all be creative in some way.”
Underwood found inspiration for her window display from Iris Apfel, a fashion icon who pushed for the maximalism movement. Apfel coined the saying “more is more and less is bore,” and Underwood incorporated this idea into the design process of her display by bringing in unlikely pieces and loud designs.
When it came to the construction of Underwood’s display, she also started at Goodwill. She discovered a dress with a fun pattern, deconstructed it and got to work. With an artistic eye, Underwood was able to pick pieces like a blazer and construct them to be aesthetically suiting for her design. In the window display, she chose to do a wallpaper look. Underwood got creative and took plain white wrapping paper and painted abstract brush strokes all over it, creating a chic aesthetic.
Curating the different window displays took the students much longer than they expected. Both designers arrived at DeMoss on Saturday and did not leave until 5 a.m. on Sunday.
Rather than this project being a cutthroat competition, however, designers display Christ-like attitudes and help one another out in the process of designing their displays. This is a team, and it is important that they keep it that way.
If students want to show their support for the window displays, they can head up to the fourth floor of DeMoss Hall near the FACS department to see the creative projects.
Farmerie is a feature writer.