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2008 Awardees
KristaAnn Ashley Filardo
Promising Young Fashion Designer
Krista is a young 17 year old Filipina-American and as many young people aspire to be, wants to be a fashion designer.
Krista sees herself in the near future attending a fashion school in New York after she graduates from high school. Her inspiration comes from the fashion savvy cities in Europe where she recently traveled, and music from around the world.
Krista recently competed in the successfully collaborated O’Neill and Teen Vogue pilot project where she became one of their five finalists out of hundreds of entries. Krista received the opportunity to design an outfit and handbag for O’Neill’s 2009 collection and participated in their first ever “Generation Next” project and fashion show. With this project, Krista had the opportunity many aspiring designers would have dreamt of or would have really needed to work for. Krista’s experience from all the elements of design to event preparation, branding and marketing, styling and team coordination will be one that she will always be proud of. The friendship of young fellow designer-, competitors and the business connections, exposure and learning relationship she built with surf wear apparel industry executives and designers will never be forgotten through O’Neill and Conde Nast’s Teen Vogue.
Krista is currently a senior at El Modena High School in Orange and in the near future, Krista wants to concentrate on a college education where she can become entrepreneurial and follow her dreams to become a fashion designer concentrating on ready-to-wear. Krista has been asked again by O’Neill to participate in preparing for next year’s Generation Next event.
Krista Filardo was seen on September 25th in a competition that became a very successful pilot project created by O’Neill called “Generation Next” in collaboration with Teen Vogue. O’Neill created a “Design Dynamics” program which hand-picked five talented and aspiring high school teens from hundreds that entered a chance to participate in this surf wear apparel industry mentoring project. The program was born out of a vision by the company to have interns be involved with the creative design process where teams from five different high schools (Diamond Bar, Dana Hills, San Clemente, El Modena and Sage Hill of Newport) were invited to shadow O'Neill designers and ultimately make their own designs and garments. After this process, which took several months, they took their finished fashion designs to the runway in front of their peers who in turn voted for the team they thought had the best design.
It was "Project Runway" with a splash of "American Idol." and a twist of America's Best Dance Crew. Parents, friends and students jammed into Seven Degrees to watch the five chosen contestants unveil their designs, each with a dress and a purse created with the help of a fashion mentor. The five designers started out with sketches and worked on everything from design to runway production. They were also responsible for marketing their team, with several groups getting creative by making MySpace pages and holding school rallies.
"We wanted to see OC's untapped designers," said Shelley Sheppard, marketing director for O'Neill. "We took them from beginning to end of fashion design. It's good to see it finally come together."
