Baroque and punk rock styles merged into one on Sunday night at “Mosaics” — Maison at Yale’s third-ever fashion show.
The show was held at Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking in collaboration with Vitruvius, a fashion collective that strives to support emerging designers. A handful of Yale students and professionals modeled in student-designed pieces.
“I saw the show [Maison] hosted the year before, it intrigued me, it’s something that we can work with — a new designer, a new artist,” said Vitruvius founder Wayne Chiang. “We are not just fashion itself. We want to bring the new perspective of the Yale designer, to have their idea and concept seen and heard.”
The show featured the work of three Vitruvius designers, Peter Junhao Fu, Emily Ying and Jenny Chen — all current university students from around the country. The brand also contributed video and lighting teams for the event and brought in some of their own models and makeup artists.
One designer, a graduate student at the School of the Environment, presented two of her designs on the runway. One piece was a dress made of dyed fabric that was printed with a Voronoi pattern, which exists in nature on the skins of giraffes. The dress was partially dyed with berries, which underscored her focus on natural elements in her design work.
Ella Xu ’26 similarly highlighted sustainability in the piece she designed and modeled for the runway. Using old curtains and bedsheets, she created a sage and white-colored floor-length dress with a vine encircling the neck.
“Very simply, green is my favorite color,” said Xu. “I really like a softer, nature-based aesthetic. I also wanted to use as many materials that were recycled as possible.”
Like many of her fellow models, Xu rehearsed for her first runway on the day of the fashion show. She received training on her technique from a modelling coach that Maison connected with through Vitruvius.
While the vast majority of models on the runway were students, a handful of professional models also graced the stage — including Kira J’Nae. J’Nae was introduced to Maison through Vitruvius, whom she walked for during last year’s September fashion week in New York City.
On the runway, J’Nae wore a gown designed by Chen that juxtaposed the styles of baroque and punk rock fashion.
“It represents fluidity, because baroque represents wealth and wealthiness and gaudiness, and punk is kind of the opposite of that, it’s kind of anti-capitalist,” said J’Nae. “I’m always trying to stand out in any room and when your clothes can stand out before you even have the chance, you’re doing something right.”
This fluidity in stylistic choices reflected the theme of the show. According to Chloe Hong ’26, Maison’s head of outreach, the breadth of this motif allowed for a wide variety of interpretations from designers.
The show also represented a diversity of experiences and backgrounds, with a particular emphasis placed on local student designs.
In addition to leading the outreach effort to designers, Hong also showcased her own pieces on the runway. Hong and her sister run Cloud9 Hanfu Studio, a clothing brand that fuses traditional Chinese clothing with more modern styles and presents them to a Western audience.
The original outfits she displayed at the show included pieces from Cloud9’s Chinese Valentine’s Day collection, as well as the brand’s Year of the Snake collection, which includes eight sets based on a different species of snake relevant to Han mythology and culture.
“I definitely know that a lot of designers, myself included, made designs inspired by their culture or heritage, and on the runway, to see that stuff was really cool,” said Hong. “When you’re not casting a big brand, you’re more likely to get small creators who pull from their own ideas and their own culture.”
Hong shared that about 40 percent of designers were Yale students; eighty percent were student designers in general.
Models and designers, alike, highlighted the collaborative nature of their experience leading up to and during the show.
“Sometimes you go to events and everyone is to themselves, to the business. There’s no time for fraternizing,” said J’Nae. “So I just really appreciate coming to Yale and meeting so many creatives that are chill, from the designers to the workers to the hairstylists to the makeup.”
The event was live-streamed by Vitruvius and is available on FashionStock’s YouTube.
Contact Sofia Gaviria Partow at sofia.gaviriapartow@yale.edu and YuLin Zhen at yulin.zhen@yale.edu.