PROVIDENCE – Two local students will showcase capsule collections at the 13th annual Styleweek Northeast fashion show as part of the nonprofit SEED Student Design competition, according to the fashion organization Wednesday.
Providence native and Bay State College junior Cotey Bertone, an aspiring ready-to-wear fashion designer, pulls “inspiration from queer culture and the arts” and “mixes masculine and feminine colors and textures,” and will showcase at the show.
Also participating will be Rhode Island School of Design sophmore Zoe llana Grinfield, whose work has been featured in Seventeen and Hartford magazines. The Colchester, Conn., native began designing jewelry and clothing at age 5, and at 15 won teen design competition Project Runway: Threads.
Invited to display a three-piece capsule collection at the R.I. Convention Center during the four-day event starting Sept. 20, five students, including Bertone and Grinfield, are in the running to win $1,000 to benefit their continued education or business. Designs will be judged by a panel of industry insiders.
The SEED program connects Styleweek with college and university students identified by their schools as “driven design talent,” who are then encouraged to participate in the competition.
The pair are competing against three other design students also highlighted in the Styleweek SEED Student Design competition. They are:
- Gabriella Delfino is a recent graduate of Massachusetts College of Art & Design with a degree in fashion design. Her designs focus on luxury fabrics such as leather combined with different textures. Her work is modern and minimalist with a strong focus on the details, such as seaming and metal accents. She currently lives in New York City, where she is an assistant to a fashion stylist on editorial photo shoots.
- Veronica Lee, who goes by voni, is an artist who translates non-visible constructs of human condition into visual material. Her work is multidisciplinary and is not limited to one specific medium. She currently lives and works in New York City while pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design. In April 2017, she released her first capsule collection on the runway through the Designow Studio x Collective program. Her work has been exhibited at the 2017 Parsons Gala, Greenpoint Gallery in Manhattan and Main Street Gallery in Huntington, N.Y. Her work has also been featured in publications such as Flash magazine and Designow Studio Blog.
- Yvonne Attie was born and raised in Panama City, Fla. She started working at 11 years old in her family’s fashion business, where she participated in runway shows and charity events, including Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in Latin America. Her studies brought her to Boston to attend the Massachusetts College of Art & Design, where she interned with Vida Shoes International and Christian Siriano in New York City and received her bachelor’s degree in fashion design in May 2017.
Tickets for the show, which starts Sept. 20 and also features spring 2018 lines from national labels, are on sale now.
Emily Gowdey-Backus is a staff writer for PBN. You can follow her on Twitter @FlashGowdey or contact her via email, gowdey-backus@pbn.com.
