Spotlight Feature

The lights go up and the audience erupts in applause as the fashion show starts. Flashes go off and pictures are taken as every model struts down the stage, one unique look at a time, posing at the very edge and smiling at their friends. Backstage, the atmosphere is hectic. Models take their place running in from the girl’s restroom- an impromptu dressing room for the night. Not exactly New York Fashion Week glamour but it will do. After 20 looks, finally the designer takes the stage for her final bow. Jessica Jones is impeccably dressed, wearing the season’s latest trends like an industry insider should: a strapless black lace mini dress with an empire waist unexpectedly paired with black ballet flats. A black feather headband completes the look pulling her tousled blond hair back. She waves at her friends, family and teachers in the audience. The South High Fashion Club’s show was a success. Not bad for a seventeen year old on a school night.

“It would be a dream come true if I could do this for a living,” said Jessica. “I have wanted to be a fashion designer all my life.” She smiles as she speaks, with the excitement and bubbly personality reminiscent of Betsey Johnson. She would seem like an average Minnesotan girl if it wasn’t for her unique sense of style which she describes as “fun, super unique, 1940’s vintage/1950’s housewife meets Ann Taylor meets Marie Antoinette.” There’s not much of that at the mall, but that’s not a problem since she makes her own outfits.

“She’s always been artistic,” recalled Jessica’s father, Wayne Jones. “When she was younger she would cut out t-shirts and her hair to do the style…I’m not sure what style it was but she loved it. Now it’s kind of her passion. She’ll come out and model the stuff in various states of doneness…and she’ll have friends over to get measured and fitted.”

It all started when her grandmother taught her how to sew, first Barbie outfits and then her own. And while not much time has passed since Jessica’s “younger” days, she has come a long way from cutoffs.

A pale blue flowery print skirt paired with a light yellow strapless top and cinched at the waist with a medium brown belt could be easily seen in the East Village; a pink dress belted at the waist that poufs out at the hips and falls just above the knees is typical Hepburn in “Roman Holiday”; while a beige high-waisted pencil skirt and pastel colored boat neck shirt with a ¾ sleeves look like something out of the set of “Madmen”. The looks are then finished off with vintage accessories like dark tights, a t-strap patent white pair of heels or a velvet bow pin to the right side of the head à la Blair Waldorf.

“She takes the styles of the early 60’s, sometimes the 40’s and puts a post modern twist to them. She’s ironically glamorizing women like the Stepford Wives,” explained Susan Wolfe, the adviser for the South High Fashion Club, which Jessica founded in Minneapolis. “There’s always a band or accentuation of the styles on the waistline. She still needs to understand more technique but she’s already taking classes. I have no doubt she will be successful.”

To reach that success, however, may not be so easy in the cut-throat fashion business where only a handful of designers become household names. Among the selected few to reach stardom and the only one under 21 to present at Fashion Week is Russian protégé Kira Plastinina. At 16, the designer had opened 57 stores around the world and dressed celebrities like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. Plastinina had one unfair advantage, however, that most starting designers don’t have: a multi-billionaire father who could make her a brand.

So in order to reach that success, Jessica is doing what a regular teenage girl can do. She took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago during the summer and uses her bedroom as her studio: mannequin to the right of her bed and sewing machine to its left with different fabrics just about everywhere in between. She sells her clothes to her classmates instead of A-list celebrities, holds fashion shows at the high school and uses Facebook as her PR agent.

“All the girls who buy custom clothing are just really elated that they have a one of a kind dress,” she explained. “If I could open a boutique some day and do custom garments it would be perfect.”

Not an empire, but a start. It may not be as exclusive as New York or as alluring as Paris but in South Minneapolis a new talent is now in.

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