What started as a simple conversation between a Kent State University School of Fashion student and the American head of the global luxury menswear and fabric brand Scabal touched off a series of events that will result in a group of rarely seen Salvador Dali paintings having their North American debut in Northeast Ohio on June 12.
What happened in between was a combination of luck, perfect timing and invaluable partnerships with Scabal and Peg’s Foundation in Hudson, Ohio, that are benefiting Kent State’s internationally renowned School of Fashion in many ways.
It began in the summer of 2023, when Paolo Torello-Viera, president of Tailoring Americas for the Belgian-based textile company Scabal, was visiting a client, Marc Nelson Denim, a luxury menswear store in Knoxville, Tennessee.
There, he met Cecelia Kirk, a Knoxville native and Kent State fashion student, who was working at Marc Nelson as an intern. Kirk was tasked with driving Torello-Viera to the airport and along the way, she talked about Kent State and the fashion school. At the end of the drive, Kirk asked Torello-Viera for his business card.
Kirk, who graduated in December 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in fashion merchandising, emailed Torello-Viera months after their meeting, explaining that she was completing a semester at Kent State’s Florence, Italy, program, and asking if an internship at Scabal New York was possible when she returned.
“I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason,” Torello-Viera said. “I hired her as an intern; I gave her that opportunity and I was blessed because now she’s a full-time employee at Scabal.”
While Kirk was interning at Scabal USA in 2024, Torello-Viera started asking questions about Kent State, its fashion school, and its Florence program. “I didn’t know anything about Kent State,” he said, “Since I’m Italian, I was very intrigued by your Florence program.”
Torello-Viera said Kirk is one of the best interns he has ever hired, which is why he was anxious to make her a full-time employee and learn more about the university that produced such quality students. Soon, a new friendship between Kent State and a fashion industry powerhouse was blossoming.
Mourad Krifa, Ph.D., the Margaret Clark Morgan Director of the School of Fashion, said the relationship is proof that the school’s students are its greatest capital.
“Our students who end up interning for companies and then working for those companies are our best ambassadors and our best representatives,” Krifa said.
Torello-Viera has since taken on another intern from Kent State’s fashion school, and he has decided to offer a standing internship to a Kent State fashion student. But Torello-Viera had more on his mind than just interns.
Hello Dali
Scabal was founded in 1938, in Brussels, Belgium, by Otto Hertz, and operates as a manufacturer, wholesaler and retailer worldwide, producing luxury fabric at its own mill in Huddersfield, England, cut fabric for the bespoke tailoring industry and its own line of menswear under the Scabal Tailored and Sportswear collections.
In 1971, Hertz commissioned Spanish artist Salvador Dali, one of the leaders of the surrealist movement in art, to create a set of paintings inspired by his vision of what menswear would look like in the year 2000. The result was 12 images of future fashion through Dali’s unique lens.
“Dali’s proposition was that all styles would co-exist peacefully so that every person would be able to individualize his or her own look, as he would have done himself,” the company explains. “This philosophy is shared with the company, as we are always looking for ways to break new ground in the field of fabric design with the independent spirit of an artist.”
The artwork has never been on display in North America and has rarely been displayed in Europe. Torello-Viera previously had asked for and was granted permission to bring the art to the U.S. for an exhibition. That’s when his wheels really began to turn.
“I started thinking, how can we make this different?” he said. “How can we make this a fully integrated, 360-degree project?”
Capitalizing on Collaboration
Krifa first met Torello-Viera when he was visiting the fashion school’s New York program. Torello-Viera visited Kent State in October 2024, and Krifa hosted him for dinner along with Rick Kellar, president and CEO of Peg’s Foundation and member of the fashion school’s advisory board. Peg’s Foundation is a philanthropic organization that supports mental health programs, arts and education, and is a generous supporter of Kent State’s fashion school, endowing its directorship with the name of Peg’s founder, Margaret Clark Morgan.
“We started talking about the possibilities of leveraging every one of these organizations’ strengths for the good of our students, to the benefit of our students because that’s what we are always after,” Krifa said.
That’s when the subject of the Dali paintings came up.
When Torello-Viera suggested bringing the Dali pieces to Peg’s Gallery for their North American debut, Kellar said he was a bit taken aback. The new art gallery at Peg’s Foundation had barely been open a few weeks at the time and the idea of bringing a never-before-seen collection of Dali’s to the space seemed an impossibility.
“You’re going to bring Dali paintings to Hudson, Ohio?” was Kellar’s first reaction. “I feel like they belong at the Met [Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York]. But then I remembered our founder Peg Morgan always said, ‘Think bigger.’”
Torello-Viera was eager to get the students involved, and the idea was born to use the paintings as inspiration for student designs and to display their work along with the Dali paintings.
Student Design Project
In January, Jacqueline Hughes, a lecturer in the fashion school, and Daniel Fladung, assistant professor in Kent State's School of Fashion – teaching partners in design courses for upper-level undergraduate students – were tasked with creating a class project for the spring semester in which they challenged their students to use the Dali paintings as inspiration for a new design.
“We actually gave our students the same prompt that Dali got from Scabal back in the 1970s: ‘What do you think the future of fashion is in 30 or 40 years?'” Fladung explained.
“We thought it would be perfect for our junior-level design students as this class really is about them developing their own unique style and point of view as a designer,” Hughes added. “We really encourage them to go deep and use their own unique life experiences to give us something really authentic.”
The idea of having their work on displayed alongside paintings that are expected to garner widespread interest from the media and art community is a heady proposition for the students.
“When they first introduced the project to us, I was a little bit nervous because it was a heavy task to create something that was going to be featured alongside Salvador Dali, which is such a big name,” said Maya Settimi, a junior fashion design major from Richmond, Kentucky. “So, it had to be top-tier work so that it wouldn’t look bad compared to his artwork.”
Students Find Their Inspiration
Settimi designed a pair of white palazzo pants made of intricate pleats that take on the appearance of a full pleated skirt. When the pleats are spread open, they reveal hand-painted butterflies on the fabric – an inspiration from the many butterflies Dali featured in the Scabal collection of paintings.
The top is adorned with a pair of giant stuffed hands that grope the torso of the wearer. “The hands were another motif that Dali uses in his works in general,” Settimi explained. “I do want the viewer to be a little bit uncomfortable by this, but there’s also the element of beauty with the butterflies, and it’s just the yin and yang of life. There are going to be things that are uncomfortable. There are going to be things that are beautiful, but it all comes together.”
Everett Schutt, a junior fashion design major from Buffalo, New York, created a men’s suit in pale pink fabric, with exaggerated wide shoulders and long tails on the jacket that created a train.
“I wanted to make my own twist on what fashion would look like in the future, so this is a futuristic example of menswear,” Schutt said. “I took a lot of inspiration from Dali’s depiction of a dandy and what I think a dandy is in today’s society.”
Oumou Sall, a native of Dakar, Senegal, who grew up in Columbus, Ohio, focused on the foresight of Dali’s work and questioned what the future of fashion will be like in 40 or 50 years without an emphasis on sustainability practices.
Her final creation was a two-piece outfit designed to look like a flower, with a skirt made of petals wired to bend and shape to the wearer’s preference.
“I used the medium of a flower, first to show the delicacy of our time and also the delicacy of our practices and our impact on the environment,” Sall said.
An Exhibit Is Born
Students spent the next four months working on their designs, which, in late April, were presented to Torello-Viera, Krifa, Kellar and Courtney Cable, lead of arts and communications for Peg’s Foundation, for review.
“I am beyond impressed,” Torello-Viera said, after reviewing the [students’] designs. “They are the upcoming generation, and it is their time to grow and to shine.”
Of 38 student designs presented, 29 were selected for a runway show that will take place at a VIP opening reception at Peg’s Gallery on June 11 in advance of the public exhibit, “Dali Beyond Time, Fashioning the Future,” which runs June 12-July 5. Also featured in that show will be four designs that students created specifically using Scabal fabrics.
At the reception, six students will be named Dali Vision Award winners, with a winner and two runners-up each in the categories of creativity and craftsmanship. In addition, a dozen student designs will be displayed along with the Dali paintings at Peg’s Gallery in Hudson from along with a special collection of Scabal fabrications created for the Dali premiere.
In July, the paintings move to New York, with the Dali Vision winners, where they will be displayed during events hosted by Scabal and luxury furniture designer B&B Italia, before the artwork heads back to Belgium.
The 12 student designs will remain on display at Peg’s Gallery through September, along with reproductions of the Dali works.
Cable said the exhibit is an exciting opportunity for Peg’s Gallery, which opened in the fall of 2024.
“To have an internationally renowned artist and a high-quality fabric design company and the collaboration and the partnership with the education component, it’s really hitting all the points of the Peg’s Foundation mission that we vie for and work toward,” Cable said.
Collaborators Become Family
Krifa said cultivating connections and collaborations within the fashion industry and the larger community expands the Kent State family. All three partners are committed to growing future collaborations.
“It is our goal to build on this unique experience to provide all future cohorts of students at Kent State’s School of Fashion with opportunities of such significance,” he said.
Peg’s Foundation has partnered with Kent State in various ways, but Kellar said this is its most exciting collaboration yet.
“Peg’s Foundation has a deep legacy interest in the fashion school because it was a passion for our founder, Peg Morgan,” he said.
Morgan, who grew up in Kent and attended Kent State for two years, had a passion for fashion and was a close friend of Elizabeth Rhodes, the first director of the fashion school.
“This event has come to life in a way that I couldn't have imagined,” Kellar said. “I saw the opportunity for Kent State fashion design and merchandising students, who I believe are best in class.”
Kellar also shared his excitement for Peg’s Foundation.
“It’s everything our founder would dream about, having the passion of mental health, arts, education, partnering with Kent State and industry leaders and putting that on display in her hometown,” Kellar said. “The way we measure success is ‘Hey, Peg would be proud,’ so that’s what we’re after.”
Being part of an event with such a high impact, not only for students, but for the entire community, exemplifies what Kent State is all about, Krifa said.
“At Kent State, we value the human connections, and we value the sense of community that we all share,” he said. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us and for our students.”
As for the future partnerships between Scabal and Kent State, Torello-Viera says, “The sky’s the limit.”
“I’m extremely proud and honored to be part of this project because I think it is going to be something unique that we will be able to purvey and it could not have been done, and hopefully so successfully, without the help and the contribution of Kent State, not only the students but the whole faculty and Peg’s Foundation,” Torello-Viera said.
After a long and successful career in fashion with helpful mentors along the way, Torello-Viera said it is time for him to pay it forward.
“It is my time to give back,” he said. “So, when I see the students at Kent State are so interested, so involved, it is my role and my duty to give back and try to grow this relationship to their benefit to the best of my ability.”
Additional images courtesy of Scabal.