Vancouver Fashion eZine - Online Magazine | Fashion Student

Theresa James is not your typical fashion student, but then again the journey that ultimately led her to pursue fashion design is pretty unusual. Articulate and cerebral, James can expound on the intricacies of pattern-making and dissect international politics with ease, which is exactly what she did when we sat down for our interview at a downtown coffee shop.

This eclectic intelligence comes as no surprise once James delves into her life story. Hailing from Ontario, she completed a law degree in 2003 and spent her subsequent years living and working in Albania, Papua New Guinea, Ireland, Ghana, and the Netherlands. At one point she was even a human rights lawyer for the United Nations. On returning to Canada, she articled for a law firm for what she calls "the hardest 10 months of [her] life." Unhappy with the tedious work and yearning to pursue a more artistic field, James and her boyfriend Roger Prince both decided to pursue fashion design so that they could collaborate professionally and creatively. The pair moved to Vancouver and enrolled in Blanche Macdonald's one year fashion design program together.

Aside from the big move, changing vocations was further complicated by doubts that James's conservative Indian parents might not support her decision. She began by vaguely telling them she was "taking some classes"; it was months down the road before she confessed that she had been enrolled in fashion studies full-time. Luckily her parents were very encouraging and even attended her graduate show last November, where her course work and stellar collection earned her an academic achievement award.

James's graduate collection was inspired by the notion of parallel universes and re-examining the ordinary: "I wanted to take really conventional fashion elements and use them in an unconventional way." Thus a pair of yellow pants unexpectedly becomes a halter top, dozens of zippers merge into a voluminous green skirt, and the human torso is deconstructed into a sleeve, a bra top, and a corset which can be worn together or separately. Common sartorial elements such as a tailored shirt collar are rendered afresh as head-to-toe accents on a green evening gown. Although she drew inspiration from many sources (international landmarks, medieval astronomy charts, and street graffiti, just to name a few), her graduate collection was chiefly inspired by a CNN documentary about a baby girl in India born with eight limbs. She was riveted by the story of this otherwise perfectly healthy child, revered by villagers as an earthly incarnation of the goddess Lakshmi. This particular source of inspiration is reflected in the taffeta skirt composed of three dress tops with extra pairs of arms extended outwards.

James and Prince have big plans for their professional future together. The pair just returned from a two month trip to India where, sketchbooks and cameras in hand, they visited the silk-weaving town of Kanchipuram and the National Fashion Institute of Technology in Mumbai and Delhi among other sites. They hope to start a joint collection, venture into retail, and import pieces by Indian designers. Whatever James chooses to do, though, it will be as far from ordinary as her journey in fashion has been so far. "As a designer, I think the worst reaction you can get from your audience is ambivalence," she says. "I would rather provoke a reaction or an emotion. I want to make people stop and think."