Lifestyle & Culture

Award-winning Designer, 18, is Making Her Mark

Of all the clothes her models paraded on the runway during a mid-July fashion show, the one designer Hadassa Dorcean liked best was a curb-hugging, ankle-length skirt, topped with a matching black-and-gold knit top.

“It was the inspiring piece to my other pieces, and it fits the body so well,” said Dorcean, 18, a 2014 graduate of the High School of Fashion Industries in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.

The July fashion show was the latest in a series of events where Dorcean was showing off her skills and raising the profile of her Hadassador clothing line.

Last June, she won the third annual Kleinfeld Bridal wedding gown design contest, which is held at her alma mater. She had sketched the winning gown—made of satin, lace and rhinestones—in her high school classroom and a makeshift design studio in the basement of her family’s Canarsie, Brooklyn home.

As a follow-up to the mid-July fashion show at Amazura Concert Hall in Jamaica, Queens, Dorcean scheduled Blue Ocean Floor, an August 2014 fashion show to celebrate the first birthday of her brand.

“I want to bring something eccentric but simple to the industry,” said Dorcean, who was scheduled to start St. Francis College in Brooklyn in fall 2014, describing her approach. “People tend to forget that simplicity goes a long way. People try to do so much. But you could be simple and be a lot.”

The pieces in the August show, inspired by Justin Timberlake’s song of the same title, will have an aquatic theme. All the pieces, and the fashion hall’s decor, will be accented in shades of blue and green. She also planned to introduce her first men’s line at the August  show.

Those designs were being added to a portfolio that began with knitwear, then expanded to include evening gowns and cocktail dresses.

Dorcean started advertising her fashions—cable knit scarves, lacy body suits, blazers of African tribal prints, dresses and so on—on Facebook in 2013. That’s how people began placing their orders for her creations.

Brooklyn-based designer Steven Cutting, a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, said designers as young as Dorcean are relatively rare. That’s mostly because they lack the finances and other resources needed to successfully launch a line.

Mostly, “they don’t know where to get the product, where to get the fabric, the trends, how to manufacture and meet demands in a timely manner,” Cutting said.

Dorcean knows that her goals are big and that reaching them may not be easy. After just two months, she ended a previous internship with a designer prematurely because she didn’t believe she was being given enough room to grow.

The June 2014 award from Kleinfeld, however, reinforced for Dorcean that she has the potential to make it in her chosen field.

In addition to Kleinfeld, the National YoungArts Foundation has recognized Dorcean’s abilities. With headquarters in Miami, Fla., the organization has given Dorcean an award for “design arts.”

The Kleinfeld award came with a check for $600.

“They gave us money. But also it was a great … to be able to say ‘My wedding dress won a contest with one of the biggest bridal companies,’ ” Dorcean said. “That alone, I think, was the best part, just to have that title.”