Burbank High junior puts her needle to work for National Charity League fashion show
Danielle Boyce is a member of the Burbank chapter of the National Charity League and has made 12 dresses for the league’s annual fashion show.
The Burbank chapter of the mother-daughter nonprofit National Charity League hosts a fashion show each year to honor its members who have completed their required service hours.
The girls usually seek help from clothing vendors to model their outfits during the event, but in recent years, there have been fewer and fewer businesses willing to donate clothing.
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When Burbank High School junior and chapter member Danielle Boyce, 16, heard this, she took it upon herself to take on the project of making 12 custom, handmade dresses for the Ticktockers — the daughter members of the nonprofit — for this year’s fashion show, which will be held Saturday at the Los Angeles Marriott next to Bob Hope Airport.
“I’ve always sewn, and I’ve always wanted to have a big project to do,” she said. “I’ve tried to make my own collection like three times, but I always just lost inspiration. But when you have people that you’re actually making the dresses for, it’s really inspiring, and I want to make something fun for them. “
As an aspiring fashion designer, Danielle Boyce said she needed more conventional dresses in her portfolio.
Danielle has been working on the dresses since late February and she said that she has enjoyed working with the other girls to get their interpretation of this year’s fashion show theme — little black dress.
“There’s some girls who have a romper, a long jumpsuit, one that wants her dress more glittery and another whose style is more tomboyish,” she said. “It’s really fun because everyone is very different in our class, and we get to celebrate that.”
Despite having to make a dozen dresses in about two months without using a premade template for any of the pieces, Danielle said there have been only minor setbacks during the development of the dresses.
The girls who Danielle is working with recognized that she was taking on a big task, so they sent her photos of the dress styles they thought would be easy for Danielle to make. But she took it upon herself to work with each girl to give their dress its own unique style.
“As I was sketching the dresses, I would suggest really cool fabric we could use [for] a different sleeve,” she said. “So they all started with a main design and then from there. We just collaborated.”
Every year, the local chapters of the National Charity League celebrate their junior and senior high school members for completing their required service hours for the year. The fashion show is a way for the girls to “show poise in the community,” said Danielle’s mother, Olivia.
Olivia Boyce said that she was not surprised when she found out her daughter would be making 12 dresses for this year’s event. A few years ago, Danielle made a dress entirely out of Arizona and Snapple bottle wrappers and another year she made a dress using VHS tape.
As an aspiring fashion designer, Danielle Boyce said she needed more conventional dresses in her portfolio. So last year, she made a few homecoming dresses for her friends and, a few months ago, she finished making prom dresses for both herself and a friend.
“So I’ve really been working on 14 dresses for the past couple of months,” she said with a laugh.
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Anthony Clark Carpio, anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com
Twitter: @acocarpio
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