Fashion design students lend time, imagination to conjoined twins

Mark Robinson
Assistant Spectrum Editor

On Nov. 8, a team of pediatric surgeons at MCV successfully separated Maria and Teresa Tapia, 19-month-old conjoined twins from the Dominican Republic who came to Richmond through the World Pediatric Project.

By that point, senior fashion design major Casey Trivelpiece and nine other VCU students had done their best to make sure the Tapia twins were the best-dressed patients at MCV.

Trivelpiece’s mother, Ruth Trivelpiece, is the program coordinator for the Center for Craniofacial Care at MCV. She has worked closely with the Tapia twins since their arrival in Richmond this past August.

When she confided in Casey that the twins would need clothes that would prevent them from interfering with postsurgical stiches, Trivelpiece pitched the project to Kristin Caskey, an associate professor of fashion design at VCU. The project was open to student volunteers in the fashion department.

In all, 10 students donated their time to produce five garments and a Halloween costume for the girls.

Caskey designed a piece of clothing to cover the twins chest to chest, a departure from their typical garments, which, by default, forced them to share a neckline and exposed them to the elements.

“It was a great chance to apply creativity and problem solving to a real issue,” Caskey said. “I feel that providing the girls with custom-made clothes which protected their bodies, fit them well and made them happy was a real delight for all of us.”

Trivelpiece created a brown fleece jacket that separates into two individual jackets, so the twins could wear them after their separation procedure.

Trivelpiece and Megan Murphy worked together to design a magenta and teal dress for the twins based on the hospital’s color code for each girl. All the designs were meant to strike the balance between style and comfort.

“We wanted the dresses to cover them and be warm because we knew they’d be in a hospital, and it would be cold,” said Murphy, a senior fashion design major at VCU. “And of course we wanted them to be cute.”

After the garments were finished, Trivelpiece, Murphy and some of the other students who worked on the service project met with the Tapias, who were overjoyed by the work the students had done.

“My mom told me that when Ms. Tapia was given the dresses for the twins, she started to cry. That seriously warmed my heart knowing the difference we made, even just temporarily, in these girls lives,” Trivelpiece said.

Efforts to aid the Tapias weren’t limited to the fashion department, though.

Audrey Kane, an occupational therapist with the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU, developed a special car seat for the twins so they wouldn’t have to travel everywhere by ambulance.

Senior sculpture and pre-med major Morgan Yacoe and Kristi South, a recent VCU graduate with a degree in sculpture, crafted a cast of the twins so a plastic surgeon could study it for a post-separation procedure.

Looking back on the service project, Casey Trivelpiece is happy she could make a positive difference in the twins’ lives through her craft. She hopes to find new ways to assist people in need through fashion.

“This experience really opened up a whole new field of fashion for those who really need it because of disability or defect, and that’s something I am going to be looking into as a career choice now,” she said. “It’s nice to see fashion not just as an aesthetic want but as a legitimate need.”

Photos by Chris Conway