Riva Samee of St. Catherine’s School made this dress as part of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Teen Stylin’ program. (Photo courtesy Noma Samee)
With museum-worthy fashion design, Riva Samee, a 16-year-old rising senior at St. Catherine’s School, is adding further evidence to fashion icon Ralph Lauren’s notion that “fashion is about something that comes from within you.”
She recently completed a 12-week course at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts through its Teen Stylin’ program, where she worked with local fashion designers and studio art instructors to construct unique, wearable works of art featuring unconventional materials that were inspired by items in the VMFA collection.
Samee’s affinity for fashion began at an early age. “I would gravitate toward fashion books and games and just be fascinated looking in my mom’s closet,” she says. However, she was uncomfortable expressing herself through her family’s Pakistani culture. “I was the only South Asian girl in my elementary school.”
Moving frequently as a child, Samee attended three elementary schools and faced the same issue at each. “I felt very insecure whenever people would come over” and see her grandmother dressed in traditional Pakistani clothing, she recalls. “Around my American friends, I didn’t want them seeing that side of me.” Samee says she would try to hide her Pakistani side through her choice of clothing. “Whenever I look at other people’s clothes, that’s an expression of their identity. I subconsciously used that to mask my true identity.”
After making her own outfit for Eid, a Muslim holiday, at age 9, Samee was encouraged to pursue her interests as a potential career. With her parents’ support, she attended a program for high schoolers at the Parsons School of Design in New York City at age 15.
Earlier this year, her art teacher at St. Catherine’s encouraged Samee to apply for VMFA’s Teen Stylin’ program. Between signing up and being accepted, she joined her family on a trip to Pakistan. “It was a great feeling to understand that part of my culture, where I didn’t feel like an outsider to it,” she says.
The trip convinced her that she wanted to connect her two “identities” in clothing.
The program’s theme, ”Illusion,” spurred Samee to work on an outfit that literally fused Pakistani history and culture with her American identity based on a statue of an Egyptian pharaoh assigned to her by the program. The dress uses Pakistani rice bags and CDs. Samee says the bags and CDs are a visual metaphor for facades and the illusion of a stable society and represent hiding and reflecting “something off of yourself onto something else” to echo her own work embracing her Pakistani identity.
Samee completed the program in May and plans to pursue a career in fashion and design. Her advice to others who want to pursue their passions is to “get uncomfortable” — to step out of your comfort zone to see if you can pursue your dreams. Samee says it’s all worth it.
