Long before she touched a sewing machine, Haemi Lee found whimsy and beauty in ordinary moments.
As a child, she would bask in the sight of her mother getting ready in their Oakland home, paying close attention to which clothes she picked out. She loved Disney films like Fantasia and would spend her afternoons drawing princesses in big, beautiful gowns. Fantasia, with its vibrant colors, alluring music and fantastical creatures, inspired Lee to conceptualize her own imaginative worlds.
Now 23 years old, Lee has brought her fantasies to fruition. The recent Academy of Art graduate will showcase her collection, Shape of God, in the fifth-annual San Francisco Fashion Festival, happening Dec. 5-6. This year’s theme, “Fantasia,” marks a full-circle moment for Lee.
Her Shape of God collection explores spirituality and imagination. Inspired by her Christian faith and the concept of infinity, Lee uses bright, vibrant colors to represent wholeness, pairing draped fabrics and flowing silhouettes to evoke an all-powerful being folding into human form.
“I wanted to explore what it actually means to be this all-knowing being who transcends space and time,” Lee said.
The two-day event will commence with a workshop on Friday night, featuring a talk from international fashion consultant Alejandra Boland from 5–7 p.m. at Hotel Emblem. The festival will then shift gears on Saturday and move to Sandbox VR from 4–9p.m.
A variety of vendors will showcase their products and businesses while five runway shows and three panels will take place throughout the event. For the second year, the festival is partnering with Dress for Success, a non-profit organization that provides women with professional clothing and job-search support. Each designer has donated either a designer product or luxury experience to put up in a silent auction.
“[The theme] Fantasia’s very ethereal and really personal to me,” said Melissa Dulanto, founder and CEO of the festival. “It’s my sense of personal fashion. I love to dive into a different reality when I seek inspiration, and I love ethereal creatures and different shapes and forms of the animals in mythological literature, so Fantasia brings out our fantasies within this theme.”
Another featured designer is San Mateo resident Ashlyn So, who first made her fashion debut at 12 years old during the COVID-19 pandemic, when she gained traction for making masks for healthcare workers across the U.S. Amid the Stop Asian Hate Movement, she began using fashion as a platform for her activism.
Now 17, So has shown her designs at Fashion Week in New York and Paris. Her latest project, Recolored, which debuted at New York Fashion Week, will be part of SF Fashion Festival — her first time exhibiting her work in the Bay Area.
Inspired by a documentary she watched in her biology class about coral bleaching, So designed 12 dresses that reflect the different phases in the bleaching process, mimicking the unique patterns found in nature, with vivid colors and textures that mirror the transformation of the ocean ecosystem.
“I realize I have a platform where I’m able to advocate and shed more light on things,” So said. “When I see all these issues, I see something that I want to change, something that I want to create art around and start conversations about. I think that’s really important.”
Young designers like Lee and So are part of a growing community of couture designers in the Bay Area. Local fashion collectives, pop-up shows and independent ateliers are creating spaces for creativity to flourish.
Lee says she has felt pressure to leave the Bay Area to pursue a career in cities like New York or Paris. The festival is a big step for her in finding a community while also showing how the Bay Area has room to grow in the fashion industry.
“I have such a strong love for the Bay Area, for Oakland, where I am right now, and for the people,” Lee said. “The Bay Area itself is such a great creative hub for so many artists. … I’ve always wanted to remain here and, in whatever ways that I could, contribute to the growth of the arts of this place — especially in fashion, which I’m so passionate about.”
San Francisco Fashion Festival will take place Dec. 5–6 at various locations.
