Fashion Designer David Cantu on Teen Pressures

Recent School of the Art Institute graduate David Cantu didn’t always know he wanted to design clothing for a living.

Cheerleaders and beauty queens walk to school or to a friend’s party wearing outfits that resemble modern day ‘haute couture’ in parallel universes. Fashion designer David Cantu channeled the high school cheerleader for his final collection as a student at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and won an $8000 fellowship with designer Cynthia Rowley last week.

David began his college education at a local community college and took science classes eventually registering for the pharmacy track. He wanted to follow in his older sister’s footsteps and pursue a degree in pharmacy because it would offer job security and an above average wage. He soon found himself at a crossroads though, he wasn’t sure if he could work in Pharmacy for the rest of his life after an internship with Walgreens or how well he would do in school further down the road. He decided to follow his heart and seek a degree in a creative field instead. So after three years of college at SAIC, an internship in New York City with Jason Wu and lots of all-nighters David graduated with a degree in fashion design.

He has on black skinny jeans a black shirt with studs on the lapels and a jean vest with frills on a sunny day at a Starbucks. He accessorized the look with a rusted metal pendant of a bull, Andy Warhol sunglasses with wider than average lenses, and a pair of doc martens. His hair is mullet-like with a little blue tint in it.

He was different in high school, he went to a small catholic school in Aurora, Illinois and wore khaki pants, a shirt and tie and a sweater with a crest sewn onto it then. He was a shy kid, never one to keep friends, and kept mostly to himself in grade school and throughout high school. It’s a trait that he admits to still having about himself, and one that has allowed him to stay so focused on his work as a fashion designer today.

When he decided to apply for SAIC he felt a little unsure. He knew that compared to other incoming students he had a miniscule amount of work. He had doodles to bring when he applied he says, but it’s his drive and ambition that defines his work.

Spending entire nights in a school lab is something that David did very often. He would look up at the time see that it was 3 am and decide to continue working through the night because there would be people to impress at the show the next day.

“I faced a harsh realization that designing is not very glamorous in fact it’s kind of gross, you are at school for 24 hours without taking a shower,” he says. “You feel unhealthy when you’re in there that long.”

People get the wrong idea of fashion design from shows like Project Runway or Fashion Star according to David.

“It’s not about making a dress in a day, it’s about practice and practice on the same pattern over and over to perfect what you want to do. There is a lot more to the process than making a little dress.”

Of being a contestant on the show David says he would never consider it because his name would be stigmatized with the show. He sees the show as helpful but he would not like the fame that and attention that comes with being a contestant on the show.

“Fame should not be a driving factor [when designing clothing] and it’s not going to make you rich.”

His internship with Jason Wu was a great experience and one that taught him that making a dress in one day like you see on Project Runway is not a great skill to have if you want to break into the business of fashion design. He ran errands like delivering prototypes, pieces and fabrics for the company while in New York City. He took in as much information about the production aspect that he could and also made many helpful connections. But what he found the most interesting was that often designers don’t even have to make their own dresses, they have other people make them.

Youth feeling pressured to pursue college degrees and then finding that there is so little job security afterwards is what inspired his final collection. He read so many articles about college graduates in practical fields such as science and biology that just weren’t finding work after college.

David focused on the fact that the pressure to get a college degree starts in high school social clicks. At first he thought of nerds or jocks.  But after doing a little more research through watching numerous coming of age movies he decided on the cheerleader because of the many clicks the cheerleader not only faces pressure to do well in school and go on to college but she strives to also be the image of perfection.

“I didn’t want to critique that lifestyle,” David says, “ but to tell my fantasies about cheerleaders in my own way.”

The collection uses a variety of patterns prints and fabrics all of which he created himself from design to hand production. He spent a total of five months on all five ensembles.

As we sat at the table under the shade several people walked by and he looked uneasy, “he made a dirty face so I made one back” he says. He was typing an email to Doc Marten rep as we talked because he wanted to get free shoes. He only wears Doc Martens and a fellow designer and recent graduate was able to get free shoes for his entire collection to show. The pair he had on today has giant metal studs glued to them. Once he met a rep for the company at one of the many graduation/industry parties he attended for school, he was thrilled at the idea that he could too impress a rep enough with his work via email and get shoes maybe for his next collection.

He then showed me the close up of the shoes he used for his final collection.  He made them using wedges he ordered from a slutty wear website for hussies and a pair of faux converse shoes made in China.

His passion as a designer is one that he plans on growing but it’s not one that everyone should follow. He has had to make huge sacrifices and has virtually dedicated his entire life to the art.  He plans on moving to London over the summer to pursue internships and possibly a master’s degree in fashion at Central Saint Martins. Finding employment that will sponsor him for a visa will be the biggest challenge.

Leaving loved ones behind is also something that he must do. He recalls many stories of people relocating to Europe or different places to pursue work in fashion only to sever marriages and long-term relationships.  But he is none-the-less happy that he has chosen to dedicate 100% of his life to his passion. That is the advice that he offers anyone that is considering going to school for fashion.

“You can’t have side priorities it just has to all be about fashion and finding a job that you’ll enjoy for the rest of your life,” says David.

The Mystery of The Raven

Actor Bela Lugosi in The Raven(1935)

Watching The Raven last week took me back to high school where I first learned about what irony meant in a literature class. In the movie his most passionate secret admirer the typesetter at the Baltimore newspaper poisons Edgar Allan Poe, played by John Cusack. The director of the movie James McTeigue takes the viewer down a murder mystery interpretation of what happened to Poe before his death in real life. This makes The Raven a must see if you want to take in a great example of irony in theaters because you already saw the action thriller The Avengers.

It is a very loose interpretation – just as the other two film adaptions made in ‘35 and ‘63 are – that tells the story of a serial killer who chooses to use Poe’s work to commit gruesome acts of murder. It’s up to Poe to solve who is using his work to kill people before he kills his lover Emily. The final scene where sitting on a park bench Poe tells a passerby to “tell Fields that the killers name is Reynolds” as he dazes off into the morning sky could be misinterpreted as an epiphany, that the mystery that Poe is solving throughout the movie is one inside of himself and not in actuality about stopping a murderer from killing again.

No one knows exactly what caused Poe to call out the name “Reynolds” as he wandered the streets in someone else’s clothing on the day he died. The jaded state he was in lead people to believe that it was either because he had drank too much as he had problems with alcohol or that some crippling disease of the mind and body had finally taken his life. This movie portrays that occurrence while staying true to the theme of sanity vs. insanity that you can find in his poem “The Raven.”

The poem is about a man driven to the point of madness by the loss of a loved one named Lenore. A talking raven by the name of “Nevermore” visits the man in his home. The raven is a sign of death and misfortune not normally something you would want in life, however, he talks to the raven to ask it whether or not he will get to see his lost love again. Although he is weary of it he does not send it away. This poem is about his visit by the supernatural in a time of sorrow over Lenore without resolution. “Quote the raven “Nevermore”” is the last line and most famous.

McTeguie’s interpretation of the poem is more of a collection of all of Poe’s works and a fictional account of Poe during his last days of life. So as a viewer you get to see what the time period he was living in was like and pick up on what he might have been like as a person while also watching a murder mystery unravel.

Poe’s character is madly in love with Emily. Poe spends his nights drinking his melancholy away in a state of perpetual sadness. When he sees Emily, however, happiness overcomes him even if her father has a gun to his head. She is a kind, soft-spoken beauty who plays the piano and enjoys Poe’s work. Because she is a sheltered woman from the 1800’s she comes off as vulnerable, especially when a psychopath dressed as a skeleton on horseback swoops her out of a masquerade ball.

Her personality might be the reason that Poe fell in love with her, but because her character isn’t really developed as the movie progresses its easy to assume that Poe loves her because he wants to protect her. Her strength is staying alive when locked in a coffin by her captor. She pokes a hole for air and tries to widen it with a pick. Her determination leads her to eventually punch her way out of the coffin in a Kill Bill moment that would leave any viewer sure of the will power her character has for survival. Vulnerable yet strong her character could easily represent all of the good inside of Poe, or at least the innocence inside of him.

The psychopath killer is the antagonist who began his killing spree at the very beginning of the movie enacting Poe’s short story “The Murder in the Rue Morgue” by killing a woman and her daughter, slicing the mothers throat and stuffing the daughter down the chimney. His next victim is literary critic Rufus Griswold who he kills using the “Pit and the Pendulum” story. Followed later by the “Masque of the Red Death” where he takes Emily hostage.

The killer’s identity is of course unknown until the final scene. He is determined to seeing that all of Poe’s work comes to life simply because he is a big fan of his. He is so enamored with wanting to be Poe that he even creates a new story for him to write as one of his last before he poisons him to death.

He is the embodiment of all that is evil about Poe. A dark yearning to confuse fiction with fact gives him the capacity to harm other people including himself. Only a tortured mind such as Poe’s could create an evil so maniacal as Ivan the typesetter. He takes Poe’s imagination and makes it real without regard for other people.

Poe is able to find where Emily is buried by the clue of “The Tell Tale Heart” he saves her and before he parts he tells her that they will be married in this life and the next. If Emily represents innocence and love and Ivan is the loss of that innocence and love than I think that the director of this movie did a very good job depicting the poem behind the title as well as the demise of Edgar Allan Poe.