Kira Plastinina

SMU students are notoriously fashionable, and we have been known to have a handful of fairly successful fashion and jewelry designers enroll in classes on the hilltop.

Although SMU has never offered a major, much less a class in “fashion design,” our campus is stocked with students who aspire to be fashion designers or work in the fashion industry post-graduation.

But this year we are in the midst of an internationally acclaimed fashion designer. This year’s talent is an SMU freshman who is not only the name behind a well-known clothing brand, but she also has her line in more than 120 stores worldwide, has graced hundreds of magazine covers and presented at Milan and New York Fashion Weeks.

The fashion designer turned student I am referring to is Kira Plastinina.

Students who follow fashion picked up on the buzz about Plastinina being on campus in the fall, but the designer, who calls Russia home, initially wanted to keep a low profile in Dallas.

“I really didn’t want to tell everyone about my work when I came here, especially at the beginning of the semester,” Plastinina said about her desire to separate her fashion career from her college career. “A lot of people asked me to talk about it and I didn’t want to, I wanted to sort of transition first and make my friends.”

Plastinina managed to keep her fashion fame private from most of her fellow classmates. But after presenting her Fall 2011 LUBLU Kira Plastinina collection at New York Fashion Week last month, her name garnered some inevitable publicity.

Plastinina launched LUBLU in 2008 but the designer started her career with a self-titled line Kira Plastinina at the groundbreaking age of 14.

“The Kira Plastinina line is just my store and it is mass-market segment for girls 14 to 25 years old,” Plastinina said of her namesake line. “Then I have a more upper-line, LUBLU Kira Plastinina, which is what was presented at New York Fashion Week.”

Plastinina’s high-end collection, LUBLU, is manufactured in Italy and is sold worldwide at prestigious retailers, like Harrod’s in London. The collection can be found at her American flagship store on the celebrity shopping hot spot Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Although the young designer is very accomplished, this past month was the first time Plastinina had presented her designs at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York.

“Ever since I was little, it was my dream to show my collection at New York Fashion Week,” Plastinina said. “It was something I was working on for a really long-time and that I put a lot of effort into it.”

The designer admits getting ready for her New York Fashion Week debut took a lot of planning and preparation.

“I feel like my collection fits in at New York Fashion Week very well, because New York Fashion Week is very fresh and a lot of young designers start there,” Plastinina said of her Fall 2011 collection which was officially presented to the public on Feb. 17.

Plastinina’s self-title line recently collaborated with Lindsay Lohan for a collection called “Kira Plastinina for Lindsay Lohan.” In comparison to the detailed, fun and flirty pieces in that line, LUBLU is more understated, aiming at a high-fashion, appreciative, adult consumer.

“This collection was very minimalistic, which is what I am working towards,” Plastinina said of her 90s-inspired LUBLU fall looks. “It is pretty conservative in terms of color, there are spots were there is bright red, but mainly it’s chocolate, tan, brown and white.”

While Plastinina’s brand is based in Moscow, she has figured out a process to work from her dorm room to her team based half a world away.

“I do a lot of stuff online, every morning I Skype with my office,” she said. “I send them sketches and they send me their feedback. There is definitely a lot of virtual communication. It works.”

If you see Plastinina walking around campus, she is likely wearing one of her designs.

“I definitely would wear all of it. I love every piece in my collection,” she said of her Fall 2011 LUBLU designs. “They are all like my babies, I guess that’s why my fashion show was such a big deal for me, because it’s not only me showing my collection to everyone, but it’s me showing a piece of myself.”