Caroline Lepesant is a senior at the Savannah College of Art and Design, studying fashion design. Her 16 year career in the pool including 12 years at Swim Pasadena, and 4 with the SCAD bees, including an individual NAIA national chmpionship, has inspired her Senior Thesis Collection, CARO 2.0.
The process of designing a collection includes researching and developing original silhouettes, materials, and construction details. In the case of Caroline’s process, she looked to swimming to directly influence her designs. A strong example of how swimming is applied to her collection is through the silhouette. The shape of the garments exaggerate and celebrate the infamous muscular “swimmer shoulders”. When selecting fabrics, once again Caroline looked to swimwear to create individual unique looks. Some of the materials she includes are latex, found in swim caps; vinyl, because of its sleek wet look; and netting, as an ode to the ever so important equipment bags.
Overall, this collection is highly wearable streetwear but takes cues from the functional world of swimming. For example, a design detail of the collection is oversized pockets. Pockets are pretty important to swimmers because they serve as a backup system if anything goes wrong behind the blocks; extra goggles, caps and snacks can be stored in them.
As every swimmer knows, swimming is not just a sport, it’s a part of your life. It is an incredibly demanding sport and requires a lot of sacrifice. In Caroline’s case, this sacrifice has paid off in the form of authentic inspiration.
To learn more about the collection and help support her efforts go to her page.
https://www.gofundme.com/carolines-senior-thesis-collection
This press release has been submitted to SwimSwam and published, unedited.AB
