Johnathan De La Cruz
Fashion Design
Johnathan De La Cruz is a force to be reckoned with.
The Spring 2023 graduate is a Fashion Design major with three minors: Photography, Merchandising and Sculpture. The senior also manages two jobs along with all his schoolwork.
“I’ve always been a passionate person,” he says. “So, when I started college, I wanted to explore everything and that’s how I ended up adding a minor each year for my first few years in college.”
As a fashion designer, Johnathan’s work focuses on sustainable designs inspired by the alarming rise in pollution caused by the fashion industry and a lack of biodegradable material being used.
“I’ve always used nature as my muse. But when I started college, I began questioning what I was giving back to the environment,” Johnathan says. “I was taking a lot, but what was I doing for the environment in return?”
Johnathan started incorporating more nature-friendly components to his designs like using decomposable fabric and natural dyes that eventually go back to earth. One of his designs shows the beauty of evolution with simple, white petals held up by a belt that slowly fall open to reveal the colorful, floral garment underneath.
One of his favorite designs is a lime-colored suit with a surprising twist. Made from natural linen and dyed with liquid chlorophyll, the suit has chia seeds planted in the fabric which grew into small plants, making the suit a ‘living’ garment and a breathtaking display of the beauty of nature.
“I knew I wanted to make a statement with my designs while also spreading awareness about sustainability and how we need to preserve the beauty of nature.”
Johnathan’s enthusiasm to share his vision helped him organize numerous interactive workshops on sustainability and how to make natural dyes to use in clothing through the Fashion design Department.
As a son of Mexican immigrants, Johnathan’s culture plays a huge role in his designs. Growing up, he struggled with finding his own identity between the two worlds of Mexican and American culture.
“In our society we're often defined by our culture, religion, sexuality and gender,” he says. “Although it can be an empowering thing for you, growing up for me it was also a constraining thing.”
It was only when he started college that he felt he was free to grow into his own person. He credits the diverse student population at UNT for helping him embrace his heritage, which had long felt like an obstacle. To pay homage to his Mexican background, his most recent design features a corset dress made from corn husk which was woven using traditional Mexican weaving methods and dyed with natural dyes native to Mexico.
Johnathan’s journey wasn’t completely smooth. Like many other students, the COVID-19 pandemic made him question his future and took a toll on his mental health.
“It was scary being isolated, especially since I’ve always been a social butterfly,” Johnathan says. “I wasn’t used to being away from my family, but that time also allowed me to explore myself and think about who I truly wanted to be.”
This coming year, Johnathan is set to start an internship with the Texas Fashion Collection where he will be doing research on how culture and gender influence fashion. In the future, he hopes to achieve his long-time goal of becoming a fashion design professor, just like Professor Hae Jin Gam in the Fashion Design department at UNT, who helped him bring his ideas to life.
“Being in college can be very easy to focus on your future and try to make your dreams into reality,” Johnathan says. “But I think it’s just as important to reflect within yourself and figure out the kind of person you want to be.”
Future of fashion
Thoughtful design
Like Jestratijevic, Chanjuan Chen ('15 M.F.A.) also saw firsthand the poor conditions of some manufacturing facilities as she toured them during her undergraduate education in China. Those experiences made her realize she wanted to do more than make beautiful clothes.
Then, as a master's student in fashion design at UNT, she was introduced to sustainability and thinking through a garment's whole life cycle. Now, she's come full circle as an associate professor of fashion design in UNT's College of Visual Arts and Design exploring ways clothing could be developed on demand via 3D printers at home in what she calls modular fashion. Her modular designs are all made up of smaller pieces that interlock together -- one even mimicking intricate, hand-woven lace.
"The idea is that in the future, you wouldn't even have to go to the store anymore. You could download, print and assemble your own garments at home," Chen says.
While 3D-printed garments might not be ready for mainstream, there are simpler sustainable techniques that could more readily be adopted by the industry. In her courses at UNT, Chen instructs students on zero waste pattern design and cutting techniques that reduce fabric scraps.
"I introduce sustainability in all of my courses as something that shouldn't be an extra thing to think about, but rather something that's a natural consideration in the way students approach their designs," Chen says.
Many of Chen's students have taken a sustainability focus with their work. For his senior collection inspired by nature, Johnathan De La Cruz is using all cotton fiber and natural dyes.
"I wanted to use biodegradable materials so that if it ends up in a landfill, it can decompose naturally and not pollute our environment," he says.
De La Cruz visited a cotton farm along with other fashion design students in 2022. The trip was one of many educational initiatives -- such as field trips, lectures and workshops -- funded through grants UNT has received in recent years from Cotton Inc., a nonprofit funded by U.S. cotton growers that is focused on research and marketing of the crop.
"It's so important to step outside of the design process and think about other parts of the fashion industry -- such as where fabric is being made, how it's being made and who it's being made by," De La Cruz says.
That perspective is exactly what UNT fashion design faculty members Barbara Trippeer and Hae Jin Gam hoped students would glean from the experience. Trippeer, Gam and other professors in the Department of Design are working together to give students a well-rounded education when it comes to sustainability.
"We're really working on an interdisciplinary approach to design education across our programs in fashion, interior and communication design," Trippeer says. "In all three disciplines, we share a vision of ethical design, looking at things with a holistic thought process and thinking about the more human-centered perspective."
Trippeer and Gam also have teamed up to analyze UNT's design curriculum that cross-trains students and look at the viability of using smaller clothing manufacturing facilities through doing a published case study of Ottomatic Threads, a Cross Roads-based micro-factory and outdoor fashion line owned by Alisa Otto ('06, '15 M.F.A.).
"Our industry is changing. With some of the big fashion corporations closing, there are more opportunities for students to start their own companies," Gam says.
