By Mary McPartlin, Editor-In-Chief
March 6, 2024
ROCKLAND- Mrs. Adrienne Donovan is pioneering a new elective at Rockland High this semester.
Mrs. Donovan, who teaches three different levels of exploratory foods alongside a sewing class, has begun an elective called Fashion and Design RHS.
Her love of fashion began during her time at the College at Mass College of Arts and Design.
She explained, “I was always interested in textiles and had several textile classes. I got into [Massachusetts] College of Art and Design on the strength of my photography portfolio. I photographed many, many models, I’ve done fashion shows, special events, and things at museums. I have deep respect for the field as a vocation, and also as an art field.”
She still enjoys watching fashion shows, and recently watched the Paris one, where they displayed upcoming trends in fashion for the late 2024 season.
Another inspiration she had was her cousin, who lived in France and would often send clothes she did not want Mrs. Donovan to have, which included some very good designer pieces.
Something that sparked this new elective was Rockland’s increasing offerings of more vocational electives at school.
“Under the fashion and design umbrella, there are hundreds of positions in the professional world. There is a mindset here at the high school that some of these elective classes can include more vocational facts and be more centered around possibly working within these fields,” she said.
She also is helping out with DECA, the Distributive Education Clubs of America, with Mr. Lordi, the Rockland High business teacher. DECA is centered around teaching students how to pursue entrepreneurship and management skills.
She continued, “I love the fact that we have a relatively new business teacher again. We had that ten, fourteen years ago. I’m excited that we’re now a part of DECA again for people who want to become small business owners because that’s the backbone of our economic force here in the United States. It’s exciting to me that I'm helping to create the future possible leaders in this particular category of fashion and design.”
Her fashion students are starting with hand sewing, and as time progresses they will build upon this skill and create more complicated projects with sewing machines.
“I leave it up to people to work at their own pace,” she began, “I don’t like to micromanage my students. I want them to be comfortable doing whatever they’re doing. We’ll start with small projects, like hand scrunchies, and we’ll move up to headbands and eyeglass cases and pillowcases and then tote bags.”
Sustainability and upcycling are topics Mrs. Donovan is quite eager to touch upon in her class, as they’re both large components of the fashion industry. She plans to end the year with her students creating an upcycling project.
“Usually what’s in right now will not be in two to three years from now, but ten years from now, that stuff is coming back. So it is a cycle, it is something that repeats, and sustainability right now is a really hot topic as is fast fashion. Like what’s going on in the world of fast fashion and do you know what you're really buying when you’re buying stuff from Shein and Temu and should you choose to give your money to those kinds of organizations?”
Emily Tsiantoulas, a senior, is currently in Mrs. Donovan’s class and is loving it.
She’s been interested in fashion since she was young and has “always loved clothes growing up, but didn’t realize it could be a career until around freshman year. I grew up putting outfits together, doing my makeup, and watching fashion shows and movies.”
Her interest in the class started because she is attending Marist College next fall for fashion.
She explained, “I’m excited to learn the design portion of the class because I am majoring in business, so it allows me to have a better appreciation for those pursuing fashion. And since I am going to college to study fashion, so I wanted a prerequisite class to see how fashion is taught.”
In class so far, they have learned about early-world fashion in both Rome and Greece and have started hand sewing. And although she has not done much hand sewing before, she is enjoying it and looks forward to learning new techniques from Mrs. Donovan.
Senior Nadia Dutton is also a student in Mrs. Donovan’s fashion class, and like Tsiantoulas, also learned how to hand sew for the first time.
Dutton originally took the class because she knew Mrs. Donovan was teaching it, who she had for Exploratory Foods Ⅰ.
“I really love Mrs. Donovan. And I’m not the best cook but I really enjoy the fashion class," she said.
They’re currently working on a sampler in class.
Dutton explained, “The big project we're working on right now is our sampler. The sampler is a piece of fabric with different stitching throughout the whole thing that makes an image. We started sketching and we’re going to start sewing next week. I’m making the Curry logo.”