Xpress Yourself

You’re a Carolina student with an eye for fashion and the desire to work with style-savvy undergraduates. Where do you bring that energy?

To Xpressions, the revitalized and re-envisioned fashion club associated with Carolina Professor of Practice Dana McMahan’s FashionMash program.

FashionMash, supported with a $1 million grant from alumni Bill and Leigh Goodwyn, is an interdisciplinary design program in the UNC School of Media and Journalism focused on branding for the fashion and lifestyle industry.

Pareen Bhagat ’22 and Nicholas Fantauzzi ’23, revamped the club as co-chairs over the course of the 2021–22 academic year.

“I wanted to make a community for people like myself,” said Fantauzzi. “I love to express myself through clothing and break down any negative toxic masculinity in the stuff I wear, get my nails painted, and use visual art to impact people in a positive way.”

Bhagat – recipient of the F. Weston Fenhagen Scholarship for International Students – brought an equally passionate sense of the possibilities for Xpressions that fashion provides to people of color like herself.

The revamped and renamed Xpressions club is here to ensure that everyone interested in pursuing fashion at UNC has a platform.

What started as a lookbook showcasing modeling and photography efforts turned into an 84-page magazine (Inception, Volume 1) incorporating poetry, prose and other forms of self-expression under the Xpressions masthead.

“I want Xpressions to be a place for other students to grow, to build their portfolios and to enhance their leadership skills, like Pareen and I did,” Fantauzzi said.

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