Photo by Erica Techo.
Sours won Birmingham Fashion Week 2016 with her “futuristic” outfit made out of cellophane.
Not everyone “gets” fashion, and certainly not everyone can keep up with the latest trends. But that isn’t a problem for Spartan senior and this year’s Birmingham Fashion Week winner Kathryn Sours — she just creates her own.
“I’m so bad at following trends because I really just do [wear] whatever I want,” Sours said while donning a cobalt-blue fur coat.
After growing up using legal pads from her mother as sketchbooks for her designs, Sours’ love for fashion followed her to high school where she entered the 2015 Birmingham Fashion Week her sophomore year. It was then she said she knew fashion was her calling.
“In 10th grade, when I got the opportunity to be in Birmingham Fashion Week, that was my first experience that made me realize this is what I should do,” she said. While she didn’t win that year, she was determined to come out on top in her next fashion week in the fall of 2016.
Sours was invited to participate the spring before and created designs to prepare for the event, which required her to make a garment out of untraditional materials.
Not long after, she left for the summer to participate in a program at the Rhode Island School of Design, and upon her return, she redid everything she had previously done to prepare for the fashion week.
“I just learned so much while I was away that I scrapped the entire thing and started over,” Sours said. Her final entry into the show featured an outfit made of holographic cellophane that had a sophisticated and futuristic feel.
“It was sort of like the ’70s meets a future galaxy,” she said. Her design won the 2016 Birmingham Fashion Week Rising Star Design Challenge and spurred her into the world of fashion.
“Birmingham Fashion Week just opened so many doors for me to be able to go and study art,” she said. Previously, she said she thought she would study engineering. In winning the challenge, Sours was introduced to the Savannah College of Art and Design, which offered a $1,500 scholarship and a free one-week seminar at the college to high school seniors participating in the event.
“That’s when SCAD became an option for me,” Sours said.
After applying to attend SCAD, Sours was at school when she was introduced to SCAD President Paula Wallace.
“I just thought I was going to meet with the adviser or representative from SCAD … and I was introduced to Paula,” she said.
Sours also was able to greet Heidi Elnora, local designer and co-founder of Birmingham Fashion Week, which Sours described as “a huge deal.”
Wallace soon announced she wanted to recognize and congratulate a student and personally gave Sours her acceptance letter to SCAD. Sours also was awarded a scholarship to SCAD.
“I felt like I was being celebrated, and it was so weird and so cool,” she said. “It was like, the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
According to a 2016 article in Fashionista, SCAD is ranked as one of the top 12 fashion schools in the world, and “The Business of Fashion” places it in the top 20.
With a “very detailed life plan” to guide her through SCAD and beyond, Sours said she hopes to eventually move to a unique city and start her own fashion line.
“I put a lot of pressure on myself, and I always have since I was younger,” she said. “[My younger self,] she would be very proud of me.”
