Emerging Designer Christelle Dominique Showing Line at Fashion Week

By Khadija Allen

Fashion designers come a dime a dozen. Everyone wants the spotlight, recognition, and the fortune to compete with fashion’s very own elite designers like Michael Kors, Dolce and Gabbana and Cole Hann. Sounds good for a minute, until you launch your own collection and find that your clothes are being critiqued for the world to see. It takes a certain level of confidence and persistence for up-and-coming fashion designers to make it and Christelle Dominique is finally getting her notice.

For someone in her early 20s, she has accomplished more than most women her age as she nears her final year of college studying apparel/textile at North Dakota State University and marketing at Minnesota State University Moorhead. In her spare time, she crafts fashion pieces for her MeJeanne Couture line to prepare for Atlanta International Fashion Week in mid-July. It will unveil a fall line of trendy cocktail dresses and eveningwear for the typical woman, and espouse a touch of color and vibrant reds and purple that identify with her Haitian roots.

According to INFORUM:

“The first half of the collection brings you back to my country, how I see fall,” the native of Haiti explains. “Where I come from, there are no four seasons. It’s summer all the time.” To reflect this, the colors in the first part are vibrant reds and purples. “The second half is how I see fall now,” she says, describing how Fargo, to which she moved two years ago, has influenced her work. “People wear blacks and browns and earth tones.”

It’s her third show this year but her first outside of Fargo and likely her largest audience as she’s been told to bring 1,000 look books for guests.