Written by: Brooke Finnerty
Pulling from her Austin roots, TXA apparel and Design senior Ginger Hudson transforms iconic features of the city into dazzling and personalized garments. As the Capstone Fashion show approaches, she works diligently on her final look before displaying her luxurious collection under the bright lights on the runway. In this interview she discusses her path of finding herself as a designer, her inspirations and creative process of the collection, and the brilliant details of her garments.
BF: Tell me about yourself as a designer and as an individual.
GH: As a designer, I’m very technical in my work. I really focus on making sure everything’s super clean and that the inside looks as good as the outside. I’m very methodical in my process. I make sure that I’m making patterns and changes all before I do like the final garment.
I don’t know exactly how old I was, but when I was a lot younger, my grandma got me a Janome Magnolia sewing machine. Her and I would work on little quilts at the time, and that’s kind of all. I still had the machine and I would mess around with it here and there. Once I was a freshman in college, I was a little unsure of what I was doing but then I started practicing more and sewing more. I was like, actually, I really am passionate about this.
BF: What is the inspiration for your collection?
GH: So my collection is called highway glamour. I wanted to build this off of my experience living in the city and walking around every day since I’m born and raised in Austin. I had to get some ideas flowing and I just started paying more attention to what was around me. I like looking at the architecture, the graffiti, and particularly just everything around me and what other people were wearing.
I decided on the name highway glamour cause I wanted a more luxurious streetwear and the idea of finding luxury in the mundane aspects of life. So yeah, I decided to make a streetwear collection.
BF: Tell me about your creative process and details of your collection.
GH: When I first started designing this collection, I wanted to have the base to be more neutral colors like blacks, whites, and grays. I took a lot of inspo from Moschino and Ed Hardy and those kinds of brands. Along with those neutral colors, I wanted to input really flashy colors on top of that. The base of my looks are neutral but on top are the flashes of color. So a lot of what you’ll see in my collection are these bright pink colors. I’m also incorporating colored fur and rhinestones in rainbow colors.
Pulling from my inspiration of Austin and especially with graffiti, there’s so many bright colors and shapes. For at least one of my looks I’m going to be spray painting and using screen print ink on it. I also have architectural pieces that have a ladder of pleats and stuff. My final look in my collection is very architectural, influenced by graffiti and I’m adding my own art on top of it. It’s going to be the most time consuming one and I’m gonna start working on this one really soon because I finally got all the materials in. Sourcing these pink leathers was pretty difficult, but I was able to find this Barbie pink Italian suede, metallic pink, and Italian suede, which I’m going to be putting onto a leather jacket I’ve sketched out and made a sample of.
Personally, I kind of hate working on projects over multiple days so I’ll kind of tell myself “you need to finish this before you leave”. I usually come in and put my headphones in and just lock in for anywhere from five to 10 hours. I feel like I get the most done when I’m in a continuous stream of working
BF: How do you feel about your completed products and them being showcased in an upcoming show?
GH: I’m most excited about seeing the evolution of my design process because this is the culmination of my college experience. I’m just really looking forward to seeing how all of my visions are put together in the end and just enjoy the process up until the show.I think it’ll be really rewarding.
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