The highlight of the project, then, has been the rich conversations between the students and chefs. \u201c[The chefs are] showing childhood art that they did, where they like to shop, how they plate their food,\u201d Verri\u00e8res says. \u201c[The students are] getting history lessons. Like, \u2018Oh, this is a curry leaf.\u2019 \u2018This is what turmeric is.\u2019 It\u2019s so much more than just a lesson in fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n
The students have translated these food talks into their designs in a variety of ways. Sophomores Isadora Oznowicz and Sadie McMahon were taken with the pink napkins at Mama Oakland \u2014 and since the Italian restaurant is known for its wine selection, they decided to dip pieces of fabric into red wine. They came out just the right shade of pink.<\/p>\n
Senior Annabella Ventresco and junior Mila Rukavina, meanwhile, visited pastry chefs Monique and Paul Feybesse at their new Oakland bakery, Tarts de Feybesse, for an impromptu lesson in how to pipe pastry cream \u2014 a technique they\u2019ll use to incorporate pipeable whipped clay in their design. Their garment is a scalloped, tiered skirt topped with sugar on the edges \u2014 \u201cvery Marie Antoinette,\u201d Verri\u00e8res says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are currently 17 layers in the skirt alone, and so that\u2019s kind of in reference to the way they make the pastries,\u201d Ventresco explains.<\/p>\n And yes, there will \u2014 hopefully \u2014 be braided plantain peels, inspired by the Colombian restaurant Parche, though ninth grader Luxmi Chakrabarti notes that the plantains are still undergoing some research and development. The idea, however, will be to turn the peels into little decorative elements that she\u2019ll attach to the top of the dress.<\/p>\n For some of Verri\u00e8res\u2019 students, the collaborations mean diving headfirst into cultures completely different from their own. Before she paired up with Mela Bistro chef Adiam Tsegaye, 9th grader Beatrice Hunt had never eaten Ethiopian food.<\/p>\n Now, after multiple visits to the restaurant, she loves the cuisine and the way the tangy injera complements the colorful stews. Her design is a hoop skirt inspired by the fact that Ethiopian food is served in a circle \u2014 circular baskets, as well as the rounds of injera. The outside of the skirt is made entirely out of circular placemats, which she\u2019s hand-dyed with beet juice and turmeric.<\/p>\n But perhaps the most rewarding part of the project is the way it has given many of the students an opportunity to connect with their own<\/em> identity and heritage in a meaningful way.<\/p>\n Olu Thomas, a senior, says he immediately gravitated toward Town Fare and its chef, Michele McQueen, who, like Thomas, is Black. He\u2019s now translating her restaurant\u2019s story into a sharp-looking suit made out of gray canvas that echoes Town Fare\u2019s Brutalist concrete interior, plus a scarf inspired by its collard greens salad. Rachel Kiechel, also a senior, grew up around Dominican cuisine thanks to her aunt, so she was excited to work with Nelson German at alaMar \u2014 to chart, through her design, the chef\u2019s journey from the Dominican Republic to New York to the Bay.<\/p>\n Kylie Didrickson, a ninth grader and fourth-year OSA fashion design student, partnered with Crystal Wahpepah after learning that the chef\u2019s Fruitvale business, Wahpepah\u2019s Kitchen, was the first Indigenous restaurant to open in Oakland. Didrickson is part Indigenous herself \u2014 her father, who is Alaskan Native, went to the same after-school program at Oakland\u2019s Intertribal Friendship House that Wahpepah attended while growing up.<\/p>\n When Didrickson saw the all-Native menu at Wahpepah\u2019s Kitchen, she says, \u201cIt felt so bold, and almost like it was meant for me in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n During their first meeting, the chef told Didrickson stories about the time she\u2019d traveled to Alaska to eat whale meat with the Native people there. She suggested ingredients that Didrickson might incorporate into the garment: berries, dried beans and mini violas, a purple edible flower that Wahpepah sources from a Native-owned farm in Oregon. A member of the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, Wahpepah says she mostly encouraged Didrickson to emphasize her cuisine\u2019s vibrant colors.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, when Didrickson looked around the restaurant, she kept seeing things that reminded her of the Native women in her family. The mural of a Kickapoo woman wearing a traditional, bright purple dress became the inspiration for the top Didrickson is designing. But it also made her think about the photo of her grandmother she keeps on her refrigerator. \u201cI never got to meet her, but I always thought she was so pretty,\u201d she says. Why not incorporate the long red dress and orange ribbons that Didrickson\u2019s grandma wears in the photo into her design as well?<\/p>\n Didrickson has been passionate about fashion and makeup for as long as she can remember, but because she didn\u2019t know of any Native designers, she never really thought about expressing that part of her identity in her art.<\/p>\n Now, she says, \u201cI feel like whatever I do in life, I want to incorporate some of myself in it. I want to add a part of myself into every piece I make.\u201d<\/p>\n As much as the students have found inspiration from the chefs, the effect has been reciprocal. Paul Iglesias and Sophia Akbar, the husband-and-wife team behind Parche and Jaji, have even found themselves tweaking their menu for the Cuisine and Couture gala in response to their students\u2019 evolving designs.<\/p>\n Iglesias, for instance, saw that his student collaborator, Chakrabarti, was inspired to incorporate the look of a sorbet she\u2019d eaten at Parche into the design of her colorful blue and red dress. Now he\u2019s thinking about perhaps adding a savory sorbet element to the dish he\u2019ll be serving. Akbar, whose contemporary Afghan restaurant Jaji opened earlier this year, decided to adjust her dish after seeing how much dried fruit her student had incorporated into her piece.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s art at its purest,\u201d Iglesias says of the way designers and chefs, students and mentors, are coming together to create something magical that will exist only for that moment \u2014 one bite, one stroll down the runway.<\/p>\n Or, as Akbar puts it, \u201cIt\u2019s a lot more of an interesting pairing than talking to your typical winemaker.\u201d<\/p>\n And of course, as an event put on by the tourism bureau, Cuisine and Couture is meant to be a platform to show Oakland in the best possible light, at a time when news headlines about the city are often bleak. alaMar\u2019s German says he has been so impressed by the wealth of creative, talented artists at OSA. For him, the food and fashion event will be proof that \u201cOakland is not hopeless.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s so much still here that\u2019s positive and beautiful,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd now it\u2019s our time to really shine.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s the project\u2019s richly textured, multidimensional aspect that makes the project feel especially Oakland to Verri\u00e8res \u2014 the way that so many different neighborhoods and food genres are represented, and how her students have peeled back so many layers of culture and history and cuisine. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t do this in San Francisco,\u201d she says, laughing.<\/p>\n In just a couple of weeks, Verri\u00e8res hopes everyone in Oakland who loves food, culture and creativity will come out to see what her students have made with their own two hands. The gasps of delight when a model walks out wearing a dress made of corn husks, or sugar, or spray-painted pasta. The poignant moment when each pair of chefs and student designers walks down the makeshift runway together, side by side. The way, perhaps, the whole Town will rise to its feet to give them their flowers.<\/p>\n Cuisine and Couture<\/em><\/a> will take place on Sunday, Oct. 12, from 11:30 a.m.\u20131:30 p.m., at the Oakland Museum of California (1000 Oak St., Oakland). <\/em>Tickets<\/em><\/a> ($25\u2013$75) are available online until sold out.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The highlight of the project, then, has been the rich conversations between the students and chefs. \u201c[The chefs are] showing childhood art that they did, where they like to shop, how they plate their food,\u201d Verri\u00e8res says. \u201c[The students are] getting history lessons. Like, \u2018Oh, this is a curry leaf.\u2019 \u2018This is what turmeric is.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1222,308,226,146,964,1223,1221],"class_list":{"0":"post-4762","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fashion","8":"tag-create","9":"tag-designers","10":"tag-fashion","11":"tag-food","12":"tag-inspired","13":"tag-oakland","14":"tag-teen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.kqed.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/09\/250918-TEENFASHIONSTUDENTS_02324_TV-KQEd.jpg\")
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A two-way collaboration<\/h2>\n
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