Don’t be surprised if, some day soon, while browsing through the clothing department at Nordstroms or Marshalls, the tags on some garments read: “Allie Doyle Design” or “Alexandra Fashions.”
Alexandra “Allie” Doyle, a 2016 graduate of Methuen High School and a 2020 graduate of Lasell College’s Fashion Design and Production program, entered her line of clothing in the October Boston Fashion Week as part of a cooperative effort to highlight seniors’ capstone creations.
Because of the limitations of COVID-19, the traditional spring runway show at the school was canceled in favor of a fall, virtual show that included videos, photos and online presentations.
Doyle, 23 and now a resident of Dracut, made a bold presentation of her hand-crafted outfits built around the twin themes of dance and percussion music.
“I was in the Methuen High School drumline for four years, so that was a big part of my inspiration,” she said. “I’ve been dancing for 16 years. After I left high school, Lasell doesn’t have a band, but I wanted to bring back my love of drums. And I love the color blue. Everything in my life is blue — even my hair — so I used that in my collection.”
The drummer/dancer/blue combination of inspirations culminates in a distinctive look in Doyle’s fashions — none of them are meek and they all seem bold and bright and loud, like a drumline.
Some of the outfits look like they belong on a dancer, and one of the images she entered into the fashion show was of a ballerina on her toes under a sign for the Newton Center Green Line subway stop.
She said COVID played a role in how she did her fashion shoots, as she had to coordinate with models and a photographer — her mom — to get together somewhere outside for each shoot.
“I met up with my models, gave them the costumes, and from a safe distance my mom would take pictures,” she said. “It was hard to get ahold of models and make sure they felt safe to go to public places and take pictures.”
The collection is filled with images of models in blue — some wearing hip-hop style cargo pants while others are wearing suspenders and zip-up tops that might be donned by someone on the drumline.
She had about a month to pull the project together.
“We emailed our content including music, photos and a video of myself, to our professor, Lynn Blake, who passed it on to Ecast,” she said, referring to a Boston company that put together a video of the projects by all of the Lasell Fashion Design seniors.
“The opportunity to see the class of 2020’s work and to celebrate their perseverance during an incredibly challenging time was moving, to say the least!” said Professor Jill Carey.
Associate Professor Kathleen Potter, dean of the School of Fashion, and Professor Lynn Blake, chair of the Fashion Design and Production program, worked alongside Carey to bring the virtual collaboration to life.