Meet the 14-year-old fashion designer from North Potomac

A 12 months ago, Chloe Ayissi-Etoh didn’t know how to sew. But this spring, in a college auditorium packed with more than 900 people today, the teenager soaked in thunderous applause as a bona fide vogue designer.

In a pink gown she’d concluded perfecting just minutes before, Chloe adopted products who’d walked the stage at Walter Johnson Significant Faculty in Bethesda in nine seems from her first selection, underneath her brand chlolanà—a blend of her initial identify and center name, Alana.

For Chloe, an eighth grader at the time, the trend demonstrate was a significant accomplishment. What made it even far more outstanding was that she’d had just 4 weeks to structure, sew and healthy the dresses, trousers, shirts and corsets she’d sketched for different entire body kinds. The present was held during a retreat for the Minority Students System, a team led by Montgomery County General public Educational institutions students that’s doing work to close the achievement gap.

“I didn’t have time to even sleep—I bought in between two and 4 several hours a night time,” suggests Chloe, 14, who life in North Potomac and attended Robert Frost Center College in Rockville. “It was quite hectic, but if I’m set on anything, I’m heading to do it no matter of what anybody says and no make any difference how outrageous it seems.”

The vogue demonstrate was so well received that it earned an encore efficiency two months later as aspect of Robert Frost’s 50th anniversary celebration. Robert Frost science instructor Sunila Varghese, who co-sponsors the school’s chapter of the Minority Students Software and has known Chloe for two years, notes that the teen managed two assistants and two makeup artists all through the present, and also choreographed walks for the types, all fellow classmates.

“You could hear a gasp when the [audience] read she was 14. My heart was just comprehensive,” Varghese states. “She’s a quite brilliant and talented woman, and what ever she does, she’s a rock star at it.”

Chloe, a increasing ninth grader at Wootton Large Faculty in Rockville, describes her aesthetic as mainly monochrome with a pop of color—“a combination of streetwear and stylish.” She draws inspiration from fashion models such as London designer House of CB, recognised for its determine-hugging pieces.

Chloe became interested in style in June 2021 immediately after having into thrift-keep searching and observing TikTok movies about upcycling garments. She soon started off using sewing classes from an aunt. Many several hours on YouTube followed as she soaked up sewing and style terminology.

Once college started that tumble, Chloe says, she no more time wanted to dress in sweats and hoodies to course. She swiftly turned recognised for her personal layouts, even earning a “Best Dressed” award from fellow eighth graders in a university student survey. “For some reason, I just grew to become a fashionista,” she states. “I would go into my closet, search at some clothes, put with each other an outfit, and it would change out awesome.”

Just because she’s no extended donning sweats and hoodies in the hallways doesn’t signify Chloe never attire down. But even then, she claims, she places a spin on her seem. “Honestly, it is dependent on my mood,” she states. “If I experience extra that day, I’ll create a actually extra outfit for that working day at school—maybe spice factors up with some superior-waisted flare pants and [a] turtleneck with an under-bust corset.”

Describing the method of deconstructing a garment as “beautiful,” Chloe earlier this yr took out a zipper and ripped up the seams of a pair of stretchy pink shorts she purchased for $2 at a thrift retail store. She then  included interfacing and created an under-bust corset she often wears to faculty in excess of a white gown shirt. “My mother does not like that I have these a large obsession with corsets,” she admits.

Her mom, Katrina, 45, says she endures frequent trend guidance from Chloe, her only daughter amid 4 young children. “She does check with if she can style and dress me, but I tell her, ‘No, get out of my closet. I’m wonderful,’ ” Katrina states. “But probably this summertime I’ll check with her to make me a shirt.”

Chloe ideas to develop into a designer with her individual line of middle- to higher-end completely ready-to-wear garments. She states she finds inspiration just about everywhere and remembers as soon as devising a color-blocked streetwear glimpse from a ladder propped in opposition to a wall in French course. She is changing a basement storage home at her house into a stitching studio with mild pink walls, white tables, a lot of inexperienced vegetation, and a indication bearing her brand name name.

Katrina, in the meantime, is striving to reconcile that the daughter she has witnessed hop from 1 pastime to the next—though Chloe however enjoys to bake and cook—now appears to be fully commited to a upcoming in trend. “The Lord must operate in mysterious approaches,” she claims. “Never did I see this a single coming. … She enjoys what she does, and you cannot purchase that.”