One of my first thoughts the week before spring break was, “What is going to happen to Fringe?” NYU had just announced that classes would be going remote due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A week later, they sent students home for the remainder of the semester. A handful of meetings and months of planning photoshoots and location scouting was fruitless. Our initially-planned Fringe photoshoot scheduled for after break had to be indefinitely cancelled due to the PAUSE New York had mandated to prevent the spread of COVID-19, let alone the steps NYU had already taken.

I flew back home to California with Fringe being the last thing on my mind. In my head it was over and most likely not going to be possible this semester, just one creative project of many cancelled by coronavirus.

As my family and I began self-quarantining, I found myself missing the often overlooked routine of wearing real clothes everyday and getting dressed in the morning. One way I find comfort is in clothes and the endless outfits different pieces could create, but now it didn’t have the same effect. I remember what I was wearing on special days in my life and I remember the journey a garment has gone through with me. But the emotional attachment seems pointless during the pandemic, especially when most news is bad news and half of my wardrobe is sitting untouched in my dorm room back in the city.

I began to wonder if others were still turning to their clothing as an emotional outlet during quarantine or if they, too, lost that special feeling it once had. This was the inspiration for this issue.

Scrapping our entire previous plans, I wanted to assign our models outfits to create while they were in quarantine, in hopes that this would give those who felt attachments to clothes a purpose to return to their wardrobes. The models were given a series of prompts to style a particular outfit and take the photos themselves to display a sense of “This Is What Quarantine Looks Like.”

The pictures below are a glimpse into these home photoshoots and different outfits.

Thank you Sara Miranda, our Under the Arch Multimedia Editor, and Deborah Alalade and Charlie Dodge, our Creative Directors. I thank you all for being dedicated to this project before the semester even began as well as for your creative eyes for design and photography.

Thank you to Alejandra Arevalo, Deputy Under the Arch Editor, for designing the entire web layout on your own. I couldn’t be any more grateful for you and I commend you for your extreme diligence to Fringe. You are a saint!

To my Dining Editor, Lauren Gruber, I miss you and how we could talk for hours about everything and nothing at the same time. Thank you for your lovely profile and dedication to Fringe. Divya Nelakonda, our Beauty & Style Editor, thank you for constant devotion and contribution to this project. Who would’ve thought our semester would have been like this?

Thank you to our models, Beverly Johnson, Eli Green, Marc Manoloto and Niharika Chandrasekar. Fringe truly could not be done without you all. I haven’t even met some of you and yet I feel a connection to all of you. After the millions of emails and updates, I am so happy you all were so willing to be a part of this project. I hope it left you feeling the same way it left me. Your wardrobes are truly out of this world.

Last but not least, thank you to Guru Ramanathan, our Under the Arch Managing Editor. Thank you for constantly keeping me on my toes with Fringe, and being the go-to person that allowed me to still carry out Fringe despite the circumstances. I cannot put into words how grateful I am for your exceptional communication skills and your dedication to WSN as a whole.

I wish I could give all of you a hug and homemade cookies. But until then, I hope this letter expresses my gratitude enough.

This semester’s Fringe was not supposed to look like this. What you are seeing is the process of the last couple of weeks, dozens of emails, scheduled phone calls and home photo-shoots taken by a self-timer, sibling or a parent. I hope you enjoy, and find inspiration to style an outfit of your own to shine some light on your day.