EMERGING DESIGNER

Yasser Faraco

IN THIS FEATURE: Meet Yasser Faraco Fashion Focus

OMANCE: The Dark Side of the spring/summer 2010 collection is inspired by love, romance, and sexiness that includes pops of color, lots of volume. All while thinking about the environment by using green materials, reusing recyclable materials and supporting animal rights.

Cuban born, Yasser Faraco, moved to the United States at the age of 12 and currently resides in beautiful Miami, Florida. Although his family had a background in fashion, his mother was an accomplished seamstress and his grandmother was a professional seamstress, Yasser’s entry into the fashion world came much later as he became a young adult. His love for fashion and obvious flair for the eccentric were not evident in his teen years. Back then his style was self-described as calm and kind of preppy. His talent in the arts became more evident as he got older and his interest in fashion blossomed around the age of 21. It was then that he joined the “Legendary House of Ninja”, founded by the late Willie Ninja (God Father of Vogue) which is an underground group of models, artists, designers and dancers.

The House of Ninja is comprised of young artistic, talented, mostly gay runaways. The group was formed to create a family of creative, like-minded individuals. To encourage their individual creativity, the group members participated in a variety of competitions including dance, fashion, beauty and looks. The men even competed to determine who looked more "straight". Being a part of this dynamic bunch helped to spur Yasser's individuality, and he began to stand out with his unique and “out of the box” sense of style. He was encouraged to be himself and that meant expressing his individuality through his clothing and style. His new love for fashion soon developed into wanting to design and create clothing for others. He began designing for men and found that his designs were not well-received by male models. He found them difficult to work with, because they would balk at wearing some of his more unconventional and flamboyant designs. Yasser then decided that he would concentrate on creating couture and ready-to-wear pieces for women.