It takes a VILLÆGE

and Marcus hope to expand on their designs and even collaborate with other organizations who share similar goals in the future.

“We’re still in the early stages, so our plan right now is to focus on making designs and marketing,” Liv said. “We’d love to also strengthen the connection between our designs and mental health to raise awareness directly through our platform and not just the profits.”

In the meantime, the two also bring comfort to their customers.

“As soon as they released the koi fish design, I knew I wanted to buy a product with it,” Ethan H. ’25 recalled. “I would

Student-created nonprofit combines passions for journalism, fashion, and humanity

STORY Ellie K.

PHOTO Villaege.org

Each pair of jeans, tote bag, and dress comes with something more than leftover fabric, unused thread, and a price tag. For Serena S. ’23 and Isabella X. ’24, behind each article or accessory of fashion are the people who created them and their stories woven in the seams.

Last summer, they began exploring international fashion, interweaving their shared interests in fashion, people, and journalism, hoping to uncover the secrets in the stitches of statement pieces. Drawing upon their skillsets as editors for The Nueva Current, Serena and Isabella started VILLÆGE, a nonprofit organization focused on “sharing and amplifying the voices of fashion designers all across the globe,” as Saxena explained.

VILLÆGE is a collection of stories on ethical and emerging fashion, ranging from profiles of fashion artists from underrepresented communities and countries to a seasonal lookbook to opinion pieces.

Serena’s most recent profile featured Nepalese printmaker Meena Gurung and her company Bora Studio Nepal, which utilizes local fauna to create organic prints. Gurung emphasizes locality and sustainability in her work.

Earlier, Serena interviewed Shilpa Shah, co-founder of Cuyana with Karla Gallardo, about their company’s ethos and bestselling tote bag, The Classic Easy Tote. The team dedicates their work to serving the needs of the “modern woman.”

For another artice, Isabella spoke with designer Kibonen Nfi and her “Lupita” dress, which serves to mesh modern fashion with the traditional Cameroonian Toghu style. Nfi values self-reflection in her designs and the celebration of Cameroonian culture. She hopes

“[Our ultimate goal is] to amplify the stories and voices of designers from underrepresented communities and countries, in turn bringing more business to local people and actually having some kind of tangible benefit in their lives,” Isabella said.

Isabella and Serena bring a people-centric mission to VILLÆGE.

“Part of the shopping experience for me was also the personability of the people who I was talking with,” Serena said, mentioning her appreciation for smaller businesses or “hidden gems.” “I love talking to the workers in the stores and learning about each piece.” definitely encourage people to support StitchedUp—the clothes are good quality, the designs are awesome, and your money is going to a good place.”

To discover stories of lesser known artists, Isabella and Serena have to find rabbit holes and jump through hoops. In addition, they hope to emphasize broadening their worldview and international understanding of fashion and designers as part of the process.

Marcus advises anyone to “just go for an idea you’re passionate about.”

“There’s so much I didn’t think I would learn at the beginning, but I’m grateful for this entire experience of starting a business, building an audience, branding social media,” he said, “and that’s just the beginning.” to transform Cameroon into a fashion country.

And so, accompanied by their used embroidery machine, the two aim to tackle the prevailing issue of teen mental health— one stitch at a time.

In addition to storytelling, Isabella advises VILLÆGE readers of the most sustainable wide-legged jeans to spruce up their wardrobes. In an op-ed, Isabella reflected on the Chanel’s “surface level” attempt at diversity with their Métiers d’Art show in Senegal, while France has a long road ahead to reconcile with its colonial history.

Overall, as stated on its website, VILLÆGE is a “collage of cultures”: a collection of articles with an objective to discover “authentic design beyond conglomerate titans.”

“Being able to have this research [beyond] the United States is really special to me, because I want a lot of what I do to be international,” Serena said. “I think, as humans, it’s really important that we expand our perspective beyond what’s right in front of us, or what’s at our backdoor.”

Through this process of exploring, challenging narrow worldviews, having genuine conversations, and building trust, Serena and Isabella cultivate a community of likeminded individuals with a shared passion for sustainable and ethical fashion, thus building up their “villaege” (spelled uniquely for aesthetic).

“It makes me both happy and kind of sad to see that these are the people that we’re able to spotlight but not the news or media because [these people are] growing their brand with such quality and precision,” Serena said. “It might be slower, and they’re not able to produce as much as a bigger brand, but that doesn’t make them any less successful.”

Vital to VILLÆGE are its storytelling, “sense of community,” and its efforts to “give back to the people,” Isabella said. Isabella and Serena consider their interviewees their mentors and motivators.

“They teach us everything about what we’re doing,” Serena said. “With each interview, I come away with more of an understanding about the fashion industry around the world and an increased sense of awareness and knowledge about what’s going on across the country in fashion.”

While the future of VILLÆGE remains unknown as Serena will leave for college next year with Isabella following closely behind, the duo hopes to continue making valuable connections and learning more about fashion. In the meantime, they hope to increase readership (check out their recent stories via villaege. org and villaege_stories on Instagram) and encourage everyone to shop sustainably and continue loving to learn and loving to care about the fashion designers across the globe, as Isabella wrote in their mission statement.

“Ultimately, what we do want to achieve is what we say in our mission statement [and to bring] more business to these designers,” Isabella said, then added, smiling: “And if we get to go to Fashion Week along the way, we will not mind.”

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As a sophomore in robotics, she was the only female member among six male members on the design team, and even small gestures such as body language and male members’ tendencies to congregate with each other felt exclusionary to her.

“Sometimes…there’s no active exclusion,” Carina said. “Instead, there are all these smaller instances of microaggressions.”

She shared her concerns with the robotics leads.

“I didn’t realize that at the time, but I appreciated that she felt comfortable coming up to me and the other lead at the time about that,” said Thomas R. ’23, co-lead of the design subteam.

With more females and nonbinary members joining the team this year, the robotics inclusivity team has started hosting affinity spaces, giving them more spaces to share their experiences.

“I hope the [inclusivity team] has also opened up channels and resources for people who may not feel comfortable coming to me or someone else about an issue,” Thomas said.

This year, Carina is the first female design co-lead, and she aims to “inspire more females to apply for these positions and get involved in leadership, especially in a male-dominated sector.”

Lauren S. ’24, a team lead of Experimental Research Teams (XRT) and co-lead of Discussions and Talks About Science (DATAS) has experienced similar microaggressions in STEM spaces.

“A lot of the time, it’s who the men are listening to. Who do they pay attention to? Who do they take feedback from?” Lauren said. She observed that her male peers seemed to consistently look toward other men for responses.

More overtly, Lauren noted her frustration with jokes made by men about misogyny, feeling that such jokes trivialize non-male experiences.

“It’s awful because if you condemn the joke, you're ruining their fun and killing the vibe, but if you play along, you perpetuate it,” she said. “You just can’t win.”

For Jay C. ’24, a genderqueer student taking upper-level STEM classes including multivariable calculus and XRT, gendered exclusion can make collaboration difficult.

“Most of the time, it’s not that the [cis men] are better at STEM—they’re just more confident about it,” Jay said. “It’s hard when you’re seen as not as good because you’re more feminine.”

In an act as simple as raising their hand to answer a question, Jay found themself “embarrassed” due to a feeling of “if you don’t know this, you shouldn’t be here.”

Hazel D. ’23, who sits next to Jay in multivariable calculus, also revealed a need to try twice as hard to prove her competence.

“If you’re fem-presenting, you have to be right every single time. If you’re wrong once, you destroy all of your progress,” Hazel said, emphasizing a patriarchal double-bind where if a non-male student is consistently correct and outspoken, they’re viewed as “pushy” and “bossy.”

The difficulty is not only in speaking up,