Two years ago, in a fit of rage and justice, I wrote and self-published the Pretty-Boy Manifesto, a political statement about why I would not be designing for the campus runway show. I pinned a copy of it to every corkboard on campus I could find, hoping to put a final nail in the coffin of what I saw as a machine of exploitation: Yale’s fashion club, MAISON.
Full of fashion photography enthusiasts who didn’t make clothes themselves, outsourcing their garment construction labor to the external designers they lord over, and bringing the strange racial politics of the all-East-Asian friend group from which it was birthed, MAISON had scorned me greatly. But now, two years later, the club’s leadership is different. MAISON is increasing its focus on garment construction and making the group feel more warm and welcoming. The snobs don’t snob the same. Yet, the focus on a need to rebrand and reorganize is obvious, and it stands in contrast to the unified and down-to-earth image of Yale’s other fashion club, Fashion Lifestyle at Yale (FLY). This begs the question: why did Yale’s fashion clubs foster such different environments? And how do we recognize, and fix, toxic club culture on campus?
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Both MAISON and FLY are relatively young. Mona Chen, ES ’25, founded MAISON in 2023, which was only one year before Kellsie Lewis, ES ’27, Sumarha Tariq, TD ’27, and Marame Diop, SM ’27, founded FLY. Despite both labeling themselves fashion collectives and organizing regular runway shows, their atmospheres and member demographics are drastically different. MAISON initially claimed that their name is meant to present a welcoming image of “home,” but “maison” is a reference to the concept of a “fashion house,” or maison de couture—an exclusive, aspirational symbol of capital-F Fashion. When MAISON was originally founded, very few board members actually constructed garments for the club, so MAISON’s operational focus fell more on organizing participant designers and models, as well as producing regular photography projects. Their new “fashion design team” only began producing garments this year.
FLY’s name abbreviates its objects of focus—fashion and lifestyle. Leading up to their runway shows, FLY’s Instagram showcases the work of participating designers alongside fashion shoots from their student photographers and footage from their model walking workshops.
There is an unspoken but obvious racial divide between the two fashion clubs. MAISON typically partners with the Asian American Cultural Center (AACC) and its affiliated clubs like Asian Recipes at Yale (ARAY), while FLY is affiliated with the Afro-American Cultural Center (AfAm). The divide is likely a product of their original founders. During my time working on MAISON’s first show in 2023, I noticed that the club was overwhelmingly East Asian. I found it unsavory that the designers who were most openly disrespected were the few Black designers who submitted garments. Backstage of the ongoing runway show, Mona Chen spoke about disliking the only Black student designer’s looks within my earshot. Chen did not respond within two days to a request for comment prior to publication. When the 2023 show had just ended, at the bottom of the Tsai CITY stairs, I witnessed a Black designer from New Haven vocalizing her dissatisfaction at the show being disorganized and not being able to choose the models she wanted.
This trend continued in the Spring of 2025, when Harvard student designer and founder of Les Adore, Amina Salahou, Harvard ’25, spoke out in the Harvard Independent about her negative experience with MAISON. Two days before the show, Salahou received a 2 a.m. text asking for garment sizes, not including any legible urgency. When she responded the next morning, Salahou was informed that three out of five of her looks were decidedly cut from the runway show. Emphasizing the contradiction in MAISON’s inclusivity and disorganization, Salahou wrote that “promises of inclusion fell apart when it came time for real logistical support.” With these issues in mind, I reached out for interviews, hoping to use my position as a student reporter to urge MAISON leadership to make changes.
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As a second-year student, MAISON co-president Audrey Bae, GH ’28, had no knowledge of the critiques I had levied against the student organization in 2024 before I reached out. In the Elm, she told me about her interest in fashion and her love of doing nail art. Bae seemed to fully understand MAISON’s monoethnic image and was disturbed to hear about the mistreatment of Black creatives I had witnessed in years prior. She expressed her dissatisfaction with some of the organization’s past methods of operating, telling me about her goal of rebuilding community within MAISON. “We want to be a place where people can come as they are.” Bae admitted that, in the past, MAISON felt disconnected and team members didn’t spend enough time together to really feel at home. This year, she hoped to change that through communal events to bring members together.
In a February “Town Hall” meeting in LC, co-president Josh Chen, DC ’27, served matcha, managing the alternative milks and whirring an electric whisk. There, Bae addressed the club’s multiple teams: Creative Direction/Production, Socials, Publicity, Business, Outreach, and Fashion Design. She spoke with a strong voice and a smile and did not get bogged down in technical language. Bae iterated the club’s goals for the upcoming runway show, including “trying to limit one look per model to minimize chaos.” She concluded by emphasizing that MAISON is a chance to build connections as members build their resumes and portfolios. Pre-professional motivations blanket the chance for human connection. I don’t feel like the exclusive “cool mysterious Fashion aura” was cracked: it’s difficult to move past issues of exclusivity without directly addressing them. But it’s a start.
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Bae introduced me to the head of the new fashion design team, Max Tanksley, DC ’26. Tanksley is a self-proclaimed “econ guy” who learned garment construction on his own. He uses Davenport College’s Innovation Lab, a maker-space in the basement that houses a sewing machine, two dress forms, whiteboards, and a tiny army of thread bobbins. Tanksley spoke openly about the practical knowledge and attentiveness to model comfort that he has learned through design. In one anecdote, Tanksley craftily used a shower curtain to line an otherwise-sheer garment for an underwater photoshoot. He spoke with charming humility, using plain language and speaking about logistical design hurdles that any self-taught designer could relate to. And his designs, including a pristine, simple white dress and a strappy two-piece outfit in olive satin, are quite impressive.
When asked about race and representation in Yale’s fashion scene, Tanksley acknowledged the awkwardness of the fashion clubs’ racial divide to him as a Blasian creative. He explained that most board members of MAISON, including himself, were unfamiliar with the work at FLY, noting that the two clubs rarely interact with each other. He expressed a nuanced take on what this means philosophically. “MAISON is an organization that doesn’t think about race,” Tanksley said. Yet, he believes that they should, both to protect the image of the club and to create a more inclusive environment. Tanksley felt that when a designer or member engages in problematic behavior, MAISON leadership is inclined to get rid of the member and continue on as the club otherwise would. He conceded that the questions of representation, diversity, and labor are larger problems in the fashion industry: problems one student organization can’t take on singlehandedly.
Tanksley asserted the need for better organization in MAISON to smoothen operations. Two years ago, the vice president of MAISON at the time, Michelle Zheng, GH ’25, explained to me that she felt disrespectful behavior towards designers and a lack of establishing firm deadlines came largely from members being busy and disorganized. In years past, last-minute mixups with garments led to a few pieces never making it to the runway. In the case of Salahou, multiple pieces of hers were cut preemptively because a MAISON outreach coordinator failed to clearly establish and communicate deadlines. Yet, Tanksley also reminded me that the collective memory of student organizations and incidents such as these is extremely short-lived. After all, co-president Bae was initially oblivious to the past instances of backstage belittling and the exclusion of Salahou, the latter of which happened only one semester prior. In Tanksley’s words, clubs at Yale have “100 percent attrition every four years.”
However, not addressing these issues ensures that Yale students will repeat them. But how do we ensure our peers maintain healthy social environments within their student organizations? And what stories like that of Salahou and others never enter public consciousness?
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To get another side of the Yale fashion scene, I met digitally with two of FLY’s founding members, Kellsie Lewis and Sumarha “Sumi” Tariq, ahead of their Fall 2025 runway show, “Letters Never Sent.” On Zoom, Lewis and Tariq gushed admiration for one another. Lewis explained that they wanted to build a new fashion space grounded in community. “We noticed that on Yale’s campus the creative scenes here are very exclusionary of Black and Brown people,” Lewis said. She did not directly mention MAISON, explaining the exclusion of Black student creatives as a widely pervasive issue that deserves attention.
Lewis and Tariq’s experiences before Yale drove them to foreground creatives of color within FLY. Tariq recounted her experience with putting on a fashion show in high school, noting her discomfort with ideas about creatives of color being repeatedly considered “hidden talent.” It is chilling to hear her explain that viewers were surprised by her largely-minority high school being able to put on such an “incredible fashion show at the Meatpacking District.” For Tariq, making a new space for Black and Brown creatives means giving students the freedom to hone their talents without being underestimated.
Lewis discussed the cultural capital of clothes and the “unspoken dresscode” she witnessed at her all-girls private school. There, she learned that “fashion will always be political,” and became determined to consider big political questions, like race and labor, when building FLY. However, both Lewis and Tariq also emphasized the joy of having FLY as a creative outlet. Inspired by the artistry of Olivia Dean, ballroom culture, and the rawness of human emotion, Lewis and Tariq channel their creativity into choosing a runway theme. The FLY team organizes their shows in “acts” around a central theme, showcasing garments in a curated style and relishing in the play of modeling theatrics.
At FLY’s Fall 2025 show, titled “Letters Never Sent,” models acted out different relationship dynamics as they showcased garments: A female model with pearl teardrops on her face wore white lace gloves and a white headband and linked hands with the next model in line, dipping her back dramatically. Two male models carried iced matcha lattes and toasted as they met in the middle of the runway. Another male model with dark black hair and an eyebrow piercing handed flowers to a girl, only for her to discard them. Later, in the final “act,” he picked up the flowers with a black-leather-gloved hand and walked off alone.
The garments worn by FLY’s models came from many designers, including some fashion school graduates and a Yale student watchmaker, Aiden Tumminello, BK ’28, of Elm Street Watches. The pieces were curated with a clear color-story in mind, centering largely on bright whites, deep reds, textured blacks, and the occasional pop of pink or camel. They included a white satin two-piece with grommets, ruffles, and an embroidered bleeding heart applique; an all-black pairing of pinstripe pants with a leather jacket and charcoal headscarf; a white lace skirt and knit top with knee-high black boots and red accessories; a pale pink gingham blazer and miniskirt paired with knee-high pale pink legwarmers. The looks clearly communicated the theme of love and emotion without screaming “Valentine’s Day.”
After the first “act,” the emcee, Thomas Mulugeta, BR ’29, enlivened the audience with a few simple words: “Now that was fashion.”
Mulugeta prompted members of the audience to get up and try runway walking in-between acts—bringing the community into the show. Audience members, dressed to the nines, strutted the runway with confidence. One student in a suit even pulled out a chopstick mid-runway and traced its point along his jawline. It was the kind of scene that makes you want to clack a fan.
In an interview with Mulugeta, he emphasized that FLY’s community is an important safe space for Black students on campus. When asked about the presence of white students in the club, he said that there have been white students involved in FLY as designers; while model selections depend on who shows up to audition, there is no discrimination based on race. Speaking to his wider frustration with being a student at Yale, Mulugeta put it frankly: “Some people believe that diversity is something that is made with white people inherently in mind, but diversity is about having an array and not just having white people with racial counterparts.” Sure enough, at FLY’s show, I was convinced that the emphasis on forming a race-conscious, actively inclusive fashion group made for an entertaining and fun runway experience.
Leaving the show, I opened the keepsake left on my seat—one of many origami envelopes with a heart-shaped enclosure. It contained an important reminder: STAY HUMBLE.
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Meanwhile, MAISON is continuing preparations for the 2026 Spring runway show. I sat in on a meeting of the fashion design team on Wednesday, February 18. While some student designers had confirmed plans for mini-collections, Tanksley explained the rest of the fashion design team would act as a “flex squad,” tailoring, upcycling, and producing new pieces in order to suit the needs of the show’s tentative runtime. For now, this meant creating a slew of new outfits before the show. Drafting basic silhouettes on the board to later alter and redesign, student designers tossed around ideas about conventions of masculine and feminine clothing. The designers spoke about fabric logistics—implying the mix of hard-and-soft without the pretentiousness of saying “hard-and-soft”—and discussed outfits’ balance and how to avoid making looks too top- or bottom-heavy. Tanksley prompted the designers to offer suggestions for the piece without fear of being wrong. And with Asian, Black, and white members in the small group of six attendees, the design team alone is quite diverse.
Seeing a group of enthusiastic student designers building something together was fresh and exciting. The fashion design team meeting was nothing like the MAISON I had known before. Time will tell if and how MAISON will support non-members who want to showcase their designs, whether the club is attempting to remedy its past issues of exclusion, and whether its design team will disappear after a few cycles of well-meaning students have graduated. Yet, the scene in the Davenport basement felt special; the corners of my mouth ache as they contorted into a reluctant smile.
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Time at Yale is fleeting, and every four years, the student body is completely flushed out and made anew. 100 percent attrition. In four, ten, or 20 years, there will be another generation of Mona Chens and Jaxon Havenses causing a mess, all for the next generation of Kellsie Lewises, Sumarha Tariqs and Max Tanksleys to shuffle the debris away and craft something new, even as the name of a student group persists. Perhaps MAISON and FLY will be forever.
We can only judge a club, at any time, by the actions of its members. And yet we must not assume that all of our peers are only well-meaning. This means we, as Yale students, have a responsibility to take an honest, and critical, look at our peers constantly. The MAISON of this year is not the same MAISON of three years ago, for better or worse. Nonetheless, we must remember to make space for, and support this campus’s student artists. So, show out! See your friends’ CPAs–even the bad ones–and check out who is stitching away in the Center for Engineering Innovation and Design. Go to a fashion show. Express your love to your favorite student designers and models. And for their sake, when something looks fishy, go and do some muckraking.
Correction, March 1: The wording of a previous version of this article was unclear in its use of “populate” to describe the historical presence of people of color in the Meatpacking District in spaces of labor and night life. The sentence has been omitted for clarity.
