Sketching Your Vision through Fashion Illustration

During this fashion design and illustration program, students will use Olana as a source of inspiration for their own designs while learning the fashion illustration skills needed to bring their visions to life. During this ten-session course designed by professional designer Sergio Guadarrama, founder of Made x Hudson and Celestino Couture, students will explore Olana’s 250 acres of artist-designed landscape, collections, and elaborately decorated main house to inform their own work. Each session will focus on a different element of fashion illustration and guide students in learning to capture basic fashion proportion, shading, and realistic texture and drawing different fabrics. As a three-dimensional work of art, Olana will serve as an inspiration for participants in creating and designing their own wearable artworks. Participants will develop six skill takeaways over the ten-week course, first learning how to draw their own “croquis,” or blank figure sketches, eventually finalizing their own designs using the skills they’ve developed. During the program, visits with The Olana Partnership curatorial and education staff will connect content from the site’s history and permanent collection to the course’s curriculum.

Sergio Guadarrama is proud to be one of the founders and “Sustainability & Fashion” advisor of Made X Hudson, a small batch cut and sew manufacturing facility in Catskill, NY. Sergio graduated from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles and studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Along with Kade Johnson, Sergio established CELESTINO in 2005, an eco-conscious and fashion-forward company uniting classical couture techniques with innovative concepts, up-cycled luxury fabrics, and unconventional details.