For her senior fashion collection Clo Cobianchi, a member of the women's tennis team, decided to design pieces that broke boundaries by discussing a real-world issue. Never one to stray away from a challenge, she undertook the task of creating pieces to be worn at a charity ball honoring girls and women who were impacted by gender-based violence. "I chose a tough topic," she says. "But I thought "What's going on?" Let's speak about it."   
Clo began her ideation process for this collection, titled "The Last Waltz", by reflecting on the high rates of femicide, especially in her home country of Italy. "There were over 50 cases since the beginning of the year, that was the main source of inspiration," she says. She knew from the start that this deserved attention and care.
Alongside fellow fashion seniors, Clo spent her summer creating process books. One of her three books grew to contain the images and sketches that would serve as inspiration for her final collection. "I wanted to focus on lost love," she says. To translate this concept visually, she used a dark color scheme, blending grays, blacks, and reds. She also included metaphorical motifs of dead roses and tear-streaked makeup.
The preparation continued through the beginning of fall quarter as Clo refined her concept through mood boards, fabric sampling, and lineups of potential designs. These materials were presented to a board of fashion professors who provided feedback at the midpoint of the quarter.  Clo also pitched her idea verbally. "For a person who doesn't have English as a first language, it wasn't as easy for me," she says. "But the feedback they gave helped me figure out what I want."
It was after her first critique that Clo, alongside her FASH 420 professor, Alexandre Plokhov, refined her vision into a memorial ball. "We made a time and a day to create focus on spreading the word rather than just putting the designs out there," she says. Her collection was already intended to be worn at formal settings, so having an elegant hypothetical ball allowed for a strong central vision to contain the pieces.
With the intention strongly in place, Clo began working on her first prototype. She presented eight designs in her lineup, and by the end of winter quarter six of them will be fully created outfits. The first outfit she decided to create was a challenging one. It included a cropped suit jacket with a lace hood attached from the lapels. "I had never made a hood in my life before," she says. "And I hate making jackets." What inspired her to take the risk was professor Plokhov's expertise in menswear and his willingness to guide Clo through the process. "If I don't challenge myself now, when he's here to guide me, then when am I going to do it?"
During the process of pattern-making the suit pants and draping the jacket, Clo had to work through different iterations of her original sketch. "As you're making it, you start understanding that it can't actually be made how it's drawn, so you have to shift it in a different direction," she says. "It was a struggle, a lot of crying, but at the end of the day we pulled it off."
The second piece Clo is creating is a black single-leg lace bodysuit with a white and red mesh accent piece. The patterning of the bodysuit would be less complicated than her hooded jacket, if she had chosen an easier fabric to work with. "You can't really patten lace, and it's hard to drape it too," she says.
Up for the plight in the name of fashion, she draped the bodysuit and continued shaping it on live models to ensure perfection. "I tried it on all my friends," she says. "Even though I draped it on the mannequin, the mannequin doesn't have an actual shape." 
To finish out her fall quarter, Clo will present her progress to the same fashion faculty board for her second critique. This time her collection will include two prototypes as well as updated mood boards, and fabric board with muslin, suiting, and silk organza. She will return to Savannah after winter break with four more completed prototypes.
All six outfits will be fully created by the end of winter quarter, ready to be presented to a jury. "Everything will be very stressful, but I'm excited for jury," she says. "We're going to get other feedback from people who are actually in the industry who don't typically see student work."
While juggling long nights spent at Eckberg Hall crouched over a sewing machine, Clo is training hard with SCAD's tennis team. "It's tough," she says. "There is a lot going on." Even with her academic and artistic pursuits, Clo remains a dedicated member of the team. "Having people who try to understand and support you are the motivation you need to keep going."