For
Jennifer Henriquez, imagining colorful, high-fashion drawings was just a hobby.
That is,
until July when the 10-year-old found out that British fashion designer
Caroline Oates was interested in making one of her fashion sketches a reality.
“Caroline works interns and students and she likes to reach out to young
people to get interested in the artistic side as well as the fashion side,”
Jennifer’s mother, Stephanie Henriquez, said. “She reached out and thought it
was a really great idea.”
Oates has
had her own fashion design business for 18 years in Liverpool, England, but has
been interested in fashion since she was 6 years old. Oates said she first saw
Jennifer’s work in July and was “very impressed.” She plans to make her design
for spring, as the colors are bright.
“I like Jenn’s work because she has a great eye for colour and her
drawings have good proportions and lot of the time, fashion drawings on a
person take years to learn,” Oates said in an email. “I was very impressed ...
[and] she has real potential.”
Jennifer
said she has done about 10 drawings or so and enjoys drawing dresses, shirts
and skirts. Her favorite color palate as of late consists of blues, purples and
a little bit of pink. She said that she does not know of many fashion
designers, but said Oates inspires her.
The dress
she designed for Oates is a pink dress with ruffles that had dark-colored
boots. The caricature had long, flowing hair and a bit of attitude with her
left hand propped on her hip.
“I watch fashion shows and look at fashion models,” Jennifer said of how
she was inspired to begin fashion drawings. “I just think of drawing a dress
and [then] I color with my own coloring.”
Henriquez
said Jennifer does not copy or trace anything. She was inspired to reach out to
designers and professors after her father saw the drawings and said he really
liked them, including a professor at Marymount University in Arlington, Va.,
and Margie Voelker-Ferrier, a professor in fashion design at the University of
Cincinnati in Ohio that teaches design and drawing. Voelker-Ferrier said she
found Jennifer’s drawings “charming” and gave her some advice on how to
continue to develop her skills.
“For a 10-year-old, they are about right with a bit of something extra in
them,” Voelker-Ferrier said. “Now the tough part is practicing to get really
good.”
Jennifer
said she sees herself in Paris or New York working somehow with fashion one
day.
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