Mark Vorreuter

Apparel design students model their collection, "The White Rebel."

On Dec. 5, students in Cornell's apparel design classes strutted their semester projects in a Department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design fashion show. Here, a team from Professor Van Dyk Lewis' junior-level apparel design class project model their collection, centered on the independent woman who might jump on a motorcycle and ride off to work in a white suit to a world where most women wear black. The inspiration behind the line was the iconic movie actor James Dean.

"Our logo is a cream spider because spiders are often associated with black. But in Robert Frost's poem 'Design' he refers to a white spider that we used as our starting point," explains Gizelle Begler '08. "Spiders are independent, lingering alone in the center of their self-built webs. We took web to mean world ... and our woman is the center of her world. Like our line, spiders are delicate and small, but still possess a great deal of presence. We called our woman the White Rebel."