About - Caeden Smilde, fashion design and development student at Western Michigan University
Maker, filmer, and increasingly the person deciding how the thing gets seen.
I’m Caeden Smilde - maker, filmer, storyteller
I study fashion design and development at Western Michigan University. I draft the pattern, build the garment, and then film it - which started as three separate interests and has collapsed into one.
The design came first. The camera came second, self-taught, because a garment that only exists on a hanger is only half made. What I keep circling back to is advertising and digital media: how a piece of clothing gets presented, and how much of what you think about it was decided by somebody holding a camera.
So: maker, filmer, and increasingly the person deciding how the thing gets seen.
What I am actually good at
Construction, honestly. Pad stitching a lapel, bagging a lining, drafting a pattern from nothing and having it fit. The unglamorous half of the work is the half I trust myself with, and it is the half that shows up in everything else - you cannot direct a film about clothes you do not understand structurally.
Where I am heading
Toward the intersection: advertising and digital media for fashion, made by somebody who can also build the garment in the shot. I am looking for internships and collaborations where both halves get used.
Off the clock
Outdoors as much as possible, hockey and soccer, and a genuinely disproportionate amount of cooking and baking.
