2024 Senior Exhibition Artists 2024 Senior Exhibition Artists: Brian Carta

About Brian Carta

Brian Carta is a senior Fashion Design student at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. Unsure of what to do with his life, he came to the CVPA as an Art Education major and then an Animation and Game Arts major, but neither felt like quite the right fit. He was inspired to get into fashion by all four of his grandparents, who were all tailors and seamstresses that immigrated from Italy to the United States. After finding the Fashion program, he has completely fallen in love with sewing as well as designing and constructing clothing. Brian is a huge geek, and his biggest passion outside of the studio is video games! They are his driving force of inspiration and creation. If Brian isn’t sewing, he’s probably spending thousands of hours on his Nintendo Switch. That isn’t an exaggeration.

Statement

Having grown up playing video games from an early age, I have developed an exceptional adoration and complete obsession for Nintendo franchises, their worlds, their characters, and their stories. My work as a designer has been heavily influenced by the art, character design, and environments revolving around these games, and I have spent countless hours of my entire life playing them. I wanted to use this collection as an opportunity to design evening wear dresses that honor the Nintendo characters and women in gaming whose games and stories have always been there for me and will always follow me.

With this collection, I was very inspired by cosplay and the idea of blending it with haute couture fashion, cos-couture. These dresses would be wearable on the red carpet at awards ceremonies such as the Game Awards by game developers who create games, The Streamer Awards, by gaming streamers and content creators who play video games with their communities, or gaming conventions, where cosplayers and fans can wear dresses inspired by the characters that they love. Each dress in my collection is inspired by different characters from different Nintendo franchises, the Squid Sisters from Splatoon, Isabelle from Animal Crossing, Palutena from Kid Icarus, Lucina from Fire Emblem, Samus Aran from Metroid, Princess Zelda from the Legend of Zelda, and Princess Peach from Super Mario.

Gaming is becoming more popular, and it is slowly trickling its way into the fashion scene. Gamers need garments that they can relate and connect themselves to, that better represent them and the characters that they hold so dear to them. I want to see better representation of gaming in high fashion places, and I want gamers to be able to wear fancy garments inspired by games and characters that they love and have a connection with. If you are a Nintendo fan who loves these franchises and their characters just as much as I do, this collection goes out to you!