Local artists from Southern California came together at Pomona’s Wonderwall Space to showcase their work through fashion, art or music on March 6 for the “Think” event that was put on by two Cal Poly Pomona students.
CPP’s apparel merchandising and management students Daniel Villasenor and Amy Kohlbrenner realized on the first day of class during an icebreaker that they both had similar aspirations to start their own brands. Since then, they’ve both been bouncing ideas off each other to put together an event that came to be “Think: A Night of Creativity.”
Kohlbrenner based her brand on sustainability because “writing essays about how terrible the fashion industry is with things like fast fashion, it just always made me very upset,” she said. She achieves sustainability by stitching pieces of clothing together, embroidering them and incorporating tie-dye into her pieces. She gave away reusable nut bags with every purchase made on the night of the event.
Villasenor created his brand called Thought Process. Villasenor said his brand is based on “allowing people with different abilities to showcase their artwork.”
“That’s why it’s called Thought Process, in the event I want everyone to be able to show off their creativity,” he said. He even made it a requirement for all exhibitors to have something creative that the attendees can do.
(Kristy Ramirez | The Poly Post)
The profit he makes from his sales goes back to the school he works with, Port View Preparatory.
Amir Gillenwaters, a second-year apparel merchandising and management student, has been stitching his own clothing and wearing it around campus, attracting quite a bit of attention from other students. He puts different kinds of pants together to create “half-and-half pants.”
At the event, he brought out his embroidery machine and a booklet to give attendees visuals to his thought process.
He gains inspiration from how he’s feeling during the process. One of Gillenwaters’ pieces is a pair of jeans with yellow flowers stitched onto them. “It was more just me trying to tune into the vintage look and really get back to brighter days, I was trying to find happiness really,” Gillenwaters said. One of his darker pieces is based off the recent deaths of artists like Mac Miller and JuiceWrld.
Gillenwaters started off making clothes for money, but once he realized that he wasn’t proud of the person that he was becoming, he rebranded himself into U-noticed, which basically is to say that he just wants to be noticed for what he creates, and he hopes that the other attendees will also gain the recognition they deserve for the work they put into their art.
Throughout the night, attendees were able to fill empty drawing books, shred a guitar to win a hoodie and dance along to the live music. The exhibitors were able to share their artwork and stories with the attendees.
The exhibitors for fashion were The House, Victovic.o, Know Love, SCP Clothing, Thought Process and U-noticed Clothing.
The art exhibitors were Greenhouse, Bluse, Gerson The Person, Deon Iverson, Austin Kim, Tori Wonn, Xyzygote, Jasmini and Yzoes.
The music exhibitors were Pinkfire, Empty Ends, Blue School, the Indecisive, Molly Grace and Jonelle & Alex.