“Instead of going to a store and buying it…I’ll just…make it!” says Juliana Owen, a senior at Boston College who turns her creative visions into reality. Surrounded by the arts her entire life, Juliana discovered her passion for design and has since created contemporary pieces from scratch that explore and highlight the in-between of 2D and 3D forms.

Juliana, studying Marketing and Architecture Studies in the Carroll School of Management and the Studio Art Department, has spent the past year designing and executing clothing pieces and accessories. I had the privilege of taking a closer look into her world, and she explained to me her motivations, desires, and passions which are coupled with a one-of-a-kind skillset and technique that brings all of her ideas to life. Juliana specializes in dress and handbag making, with a variety of different designs within each. With a modern aesthetics flare, her ideas highlight elements in fashion that stray away from the typical jeans and sweater combo. As I sat down with Juliana, she explained to me some of her vision for her pieces, which includes sophistication with functionality, and uses her background in different mediums, like architecture, to create such designs. Let’s take a look at what the process is for bringing one of these designs to life.

The process for creating these pieces is not for the weak—ample time, patience, and creativity are required—and Juliana has just that. We talked through the process of making the bags, and it begins with a sketch using her general knowledge and idea of what she wants to create, which reflects how she wants the bag to look. One component that she reminds herself of throughout the process is symmetry, as she takes out a large piece of paper and gets to work. Once her idea is on paper, she cuts it out, playing with different angles and functional ideas to achieve the desired shape. As she recalls, the process for making these bags is an experiment with how she wants her designs to look in full form. One of the major challenges she faces is working with such durable and thick material, like the leather she typically uses and its unfortunate finite (and expensive) nature. Because of this, Juliana creates several different visions of the bag she wants to create on paper to determine her desired look and physically uses her hands to most accurately gauge what the final product will look like. Once she sees the vision, Juliana grabs her materials and translates those sketches onto them, working with different angles, dimensions, shapes, and lines to bring it together. As Juliana said, “There’s a lot of trial, but if you do it the right way there isn’t error”—and from there she is able to cut her material to shape her idea, and kind of like the saying goes, if the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t wear it, just change it!

Through this experimentation, spending hours on end working with materials and using her techniques to craft her masterpieces, she is able to translate that imagination into reality. Though, let’s not forget about all of the in-between challenges a designer will inevitably face. For starters, material is limited, and working with leather comes with a learning curve. (Another thing I learned from Juliana was if you leave leather out in the sun, it will tan). Working with materials, you have to understand how to manage the amount of material and minimize any errors that would create excess waste. Juliana puts it that you need to “be proactive with your materials”, and because of this, it is the designer’s responsibility to put in the time and effort of planning before just going right into it. The overall process is as time-consuming as can be, and you need to have the space to lay your imagination in front of you.

Juliana credits much of her learning in the arts to Boston College—her freshman year she dipped her toe into real estate by taking a class which aided her pursuit of an architecture concentration, which she was then able to translate that one class into a real-world job at an architectural firm with a Boston College professor. With this experience, she was able to learn Rhino and Adobe, all of which inspired her to continue her passion for design. What started with making a bag for a final project ultimately turned into dozens of bags, dresses, and other designs. “If it weren’t for taking a different class than what I was expecting, kind of like that liberal arts mindset, I would not have added an art major”. Juliana came back her senior year knowing she wanted to pursue fashion design and using her creative marketing and artistic mindset, she did just that. You never know what you might like, and as Juliana says, you have to test things out to achieve your goals.

When I asked Juliana what one piece of advice she would give to anyone looking to get into design, she told me something that a professor at Boston College once told her—“You have to make things”. Juliana had told me how long and grueling the process of planning can be, and a designer can spend months simply trying to decide how they want to go about a design. The bottom line is—you just have to make something. Make something, make a mistake, make your best work to date, but whatever you do, just make something. Mistakes, as Juliana says, are part of the process, and to see your successes, you just have to make it.

I want to personally thank Juliana for letting me into her creative process and sharing her successes, and I am ecstatic to share that her pieces will be showcased in the Boston College Fashion Show on Friday, April 4th. I asked Juliana what she was most excited about for the show, and she told me how she is beyond excited to have her full circle moment. Growing up walking the runway as a model in her childhood, she could only dream of being on the other side of it, seeing someone else model what she made. Luckily for Juliana, she is getting just that.

The Art of Design: A Look into Designer Juliana Owen’s World

The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Secondhand Shopping