Homecoming dress becomes national success
Staff writer
Before Livie Claassen heads off to Kansas State University this fall, she’s making her summer one to remember.
Claassen joined fellow Goessel graduate Adriana Duerksen and rising sophomores Claire Claassen and Jenna Flaming in Florida this month to compete in Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America’s national competition.
Claassen had taken part in other FCCLA competitions each year of school, but this was the first time they took her to the Sunshine State.
The four students visited SeaWorld and Universal Studios over the course of four days in Orlando.
“Everybody told me it was going to be really muggy, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be,” Claassen said. “And we all wanted to see an alligator, but we didn’t get to. … Alligators get hit like deer get hit here on the side of the road.”
Duerksen competed in a community service event which identified local concerns and carried out projects to rectify them. Her task in front of judges was to explain how FCCLA’s planning process was used to implement the project.
Flaming and Claire Claassen competed in a category called “Focus on Children.” They planned a child development project centered on health and education.
The three students received a gold medal indicating a Top 10 finish in their events.
Livie aims to be a prosecutor after college. She created two FCCLA projects centered on sexual assault education in the past.
In her last year competing, she wanted to do something on the lighter side, and entered a fashion design category with plans to sew her own homecoming dress.
Claassen couldn’t just sew a dress for the sake of sewing it, however. FCCLA competitors create business frameworks around their ideas and are judged on originality and marketability.
To that end, Claassen created Duo Designs, a company that markets matching clothes to couples.
“Something that has always kind of bothered me was when a girl would have a really pretty dress on, and she would look great, and her boyfriend would look super cute together, but his tie didn’t match,” Claassen said. “I figured it was a really relatable problem that a lot of people would have.”
She sewed her homecoming dress, “short with puffy sleeves,” and a matching tie for her boyfriend.
“I hadn’t sewn since fifth grade before doing this project,” Claassen said. “It actually wasn’t as hard as I was thinking, but I was very nervous. I started with a few scraps of fabric, and then I was like, ‘OK, I think I can do this.’”
To round out her pitch, she designed a few more matching suits and dresses, including a smooth suit dedicated to her brother, who has Down syndrome.
“He has tactile sensitivity and low muscle tone, so he can’t use buttons, and textures bother him,” she said.
Her hope for a career outside of fashion set Claassen apart from other students at the event.
“Every person in that category that made Top 10 was going on to fashion school,” Claassen said. “I assume that they’re continuing their brand or going back to it after they get out of college.”
In a portion of the competition, contestants were asked how their fashion project would help them in their career path.
Claassen referred to a hypothetical fashionista rather than a real one and kept things “very broad.”
The culmination of nationals was a 15-minute speech, during which Claassen spoke about the work she had put into her brand and its potential to succeed.
After less than 10 minutes, a panel of judges said time was up and stopped her.
“I was petrified,” Claassen said. “I’m thinking, ‘how could I make a mistake like this?’”
She apologized profusely to the panel, then flipped through the grading rubric she’d received.
As it turned out, her speech was in fact supposed to be 15 minutes long.
Claassen pointed this out to the panel, after which it was the judges’ turn to apologize profusely. After some deliberating, they allowed her to finish her speech.
Still, Claassen was disappointed afterward.
“Because of all the chaos, I thought there was a very small chance of me even making the Top 10,” she said.
But fate — or perhaps the embarrassed judges — smiled upon her, and Claassen won the top spot in the nation for her project.
Not bad for someone who isn’t even interested in a design career. For all its recent success, Duo Designs is not long for this world.
“I’m kind of just going to let the idea go,” Claassen said.