By Jessica Easthope
Details matter inside the fashion room at St. Clare Catholic Academy in Rosedale, that’s how Taneeya Alexander designed it.
“I want you to push it, I don’t want you to play it safe, go further. How can you make this outfit top last week’s outfit or last year’s outfit?” said Alexander, teacher at St. Clare Catholic Academy.
For Alexander, pushing boundaries is what gives fashion its soul. She’s been doing it since she was a student, walking the hallways of St. Clare’s in uniform shoes — this time, they’re pink platforms.
“Wearing uniforms, we would have to find ways to be creative, whether it be our bags, whether it be our accessories, we just wanted to find a way to stand out. So it was kind of just a way to be creative and to express myself,” Alexander recalled.
She’s back where her fashion journey started — as a teacher and mentor. It’s the second semester of the after-school club that’s part of Alexander’s nonprofit, the Fashion Design Youth Sorority. Students are swiftly taught the basics of sewing, given a machine, and challenged to make a garment.
“This class is teaching me precision, it’s teaching me how to make stuff for myself, how to be independent. Oh, you like my outfit? Well guess what? I made it,” shared Catleya Carnakie-Brown, an eighth grader at St. Clare Catholic Academy.
At St. Clare, Alexander is mirroring Black excellence — her class is about cutting patterns, not corners.
“I want them to try their best, there’s no shortcuts in life so there shouldn’t be any shortcuts in this class as well, you know? They would try to be like, “I messed up” and I’m like, it’s okay to start again. That’s what life is about, just starting again,” Alexander explained.
This semester, the club’s latest projects are taking shape: original garments to be modeled in a Christmas runway show and when the school debuts The Wizard of Oz, every costume will be made in the fashion room by young hands. When these students look to Alexander as a role model, they’re admiring a flair that has nothing to do with clothes. They see in her — their own potential.
“Starting fashion I was really confused,” said eighth grader McKenzie Courtois. “But Ms. Taneeya, she made sure that I was doing what I was really supposed to do and now I thrive at it. I feel really confident when I look at that mirror, like, wow, I actually did this because in when I was younger, I wouldn’t have believed that I could do this at all.”
As she guides these young artists, Alexander knows there’s a divine design for her too.
“I just feel like God has a bigger plan for me. And this is all leading up to that, this is where I’m supposed to be,” she reflected.
And she hopes her students stitch clothes as bold and beautiful as their dreams.