A year after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, Ashleen Castillo ’19 is still healing.
“It’s still hard for me to talk about,” she said, “because I had to leave behind everything I know.”
Castillo was studying fashion design at Universidad del Turabo on the island when the storm hit September 20, 2017. Her home and classrooms were heavily damaged. With island-wide power outages and trees and debris that blocked roads, life became all about survival.
“We got ready for the hurricane, but no one was prepared for the aftermath,” she said. “There was no way to communicate, and there was no electricity. There was no refrigeration, so we had to make daily trips to the grocery store.”
Relatives encouraged her to relocate to Miami to live with her father, but it was a hard decision. “I felt like I was abandoning my family.”
OPPORTUNITY
Castillo wasn’t in Miami long when she saw a Facebook post by Moore Fashion Design Chair Nasheli Ortiz-González inviting Puerto Rican fashion students to come to Philadelphia to study. Ortiz-González had taught Castillo at the Universidad del Turabo.
“I applied and they accepted me,” Castillo said. Ortiz-González was instrumental in helping to fast-track the process, and she became a mentor, friend and ally to Castillo, helping her navigate her feelings about leaving her island home. Castillo started classes at Moore in February 2018.
“After feeling hopeless, then coming here, feeling that somebody was supporting her, that is the most important part,” said Ortiz-González.
CALMER WATERS
The fashion student, then a junior, immediately poured her talents and emotions into creating a collection for the spring fashion show, held May 11 at the Barnes Foundation. Hurricane Maria directly influenced her work.
“For me, it was important to see, how can I heal as part of my creative process?” she said. “And then, how can people connect with that and feel empathy?”
Castillo’s models walked barefoot down the runway, importing a sense of loss. A male model wore a white jacket adorned on the back with an embroidered circle of orange, green, blue and purple yarn that fan out – the eye of a hurricane.
Another model’s stark white jacket featured a thick sea-blue ruff of yarn around the neck, and purple tufts of yarn at the pockets.
“Puerto Rico is going through a serious crisis,” she said. “People are getting poorer because of the taxes, so that part I put into the pockets.” The blue at the jacket collar symbolized rain, she explained, indicating with her hands up to her neck that people are drowning in disaster and debt.
As Castillo embarks on her senior year, she’s ready for growth in her designs and in her life.
“My projects reflect something of my own that I need to work on in my life,” she said. “It’s very emotional. And then, the creative process becomes my way of coping.”
