By Leandra Perelli

Leandra Perelli is a senior fashion design major at Marist and guest contributor to the Marist Circle. We have invited contributing students in our community to write about their unique experiences with the COVID-19 outbreak. We invite you to contribute as well. If you are interested, email us at writethecircle@gmail.com.

The past few weeks have been something that we never thought would become our new reality. Being a senior in college has made going through this epidemic have an even bigger toll. Every other college senior throughout America had their time cut short — and some have gotten graduation, the day they worked so hard for every day for the last 3 ¾ years, taken from them.

Leandra Perelli is a senior fashion design major and the former President of Alpha Sigma Tau at Marist. Source: Leandra Perelli

As a fashion design major, we have spent day and night for the past 10 months working on our senior capstone collection. Blood, sweat, and tears, put in, we waited 3 years to develop our collections and watch them walk down the Silver Needle Runway on professional models.

“Being 2 months away from that finish line and having it taken from us — due to such a tragedy happening in the world — has left all 21 of us disheartened.”

Being 2 months away from that finish line and having it taken from us — due to such a tragedy happening in the world — has left all 21 of us disheartened. Having to transfer from working in Steel Plant Studios to “online classes,” which, in our case, are extremely difficult to be taught online, as well as trying to create some sort of at-home studio with limited resources has been a challenging transition. It is still hard to come to terms with the fact that we will never get to work in our studio that was a second home to us with our design family by our side every day.

Perelli has spent time converting her space into a home studio in order to acclimate to finishing her fashion design major remotely. Source: Leandra Perelli

Along with being a part of our fashion design program, I was lucky enough to be a part of one of Marist’s sororities, Alpha Sigma Tau, and had the privilege to serve as their President of the board this past year. This being my last year in AST, it was extremely sad news to also lose my last few events with the sorority. We seniors will not have our last banquet, our senior dinner that our new members were working so hard on to plan for us and make it special to celebrate our last moments together. We won’t be able to be part of another philanthropy event — which meant so much to all of us, because they are always for a cause near and dear to our hearts. We would not be able to attend our last Yellow Rose formal, and we will simply just miss out on all of the things we planned in between as a sorority. As small as it may seem, missing all of these events that we were only going to have one last time, truly broke our hearts. It makes me glad to know that I am part of such an empowering group of women, that work hard to get where they want to be, and have already been working together to find a way to help out our nation in such devastating times. AST has been fundraising money to donate to Feeding America, who has been helping those in need by providing food to them. Being able to have served on a board that works harder and harder each day to not only improve the sorority as a whole, but help those around them as much as possible, was a blessing and an incredible opportunity to have in my time at Marist.

I’m happy to know that although I’ll be leaving AST and moving into the next steps of life — I will leave knowing that it is in the trusting hands of our new board, that have already made a huge impact in these short couple of months of our spring semester.

It has been extremely hard to accept losing all of this, on top of what we have lost just from being a senior and not getting to have our special final, senior moments such as River Fest, our senior formal, senior week, graduation, and everything in between. Marist, especially our fashion department, thank you for all you’ve done for us, for giving us a second home, pushing us to follow our dreams, proving to us that you can accomplish any goal you work hard for. Thank you for also letting me part of Alpha Sigma Tau, with such a unique and special group of empowering and uplifting women. See you soon, Foxes.

From the Steel Plant to a Home Studio

MARIST CIRCLE