Fashion doesn’t just happen in New York, London, Milan and Paris. Some designers, such as Sheila Frank of Mechanicsburg, have had significant influence outside of those global centers of industry.
When I first applied for fashion design [in college] Frank said… This would sound really silly, but I didn’t really know how to sew.
But Frank has definitely come a long way since then. Today, she has her own line of custom-made gowns, some of which appear on red carpets, worn by celebrities at major events.
Chrissy Metz, star of This Is Us, recently appeared at the Oscars, hosted by the Elton John AIDS Foundation, in one of Frank’s dresses. And last week, Frank provided a dress for model Miranda Kerr she wore to this year’s White House Correspondence Dinner—a look that drew a glimpse of Vogue.
“It’s an interesting world, the world of fashion/art/celebrity,” Frank said. “I’ll say this out loud: I’ve always wanted to work with celebrities. Seeing my work in print is the most exhilarating feeling ever. I don’t care if my face is known, I want the name to be known. I want to see [my work] on someone.”
Frank came to the world of fashion in a roundabout way, beginning to study fine art at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design in Lancaster. She switched to fashion studies after being praised for her work in the print industry, and went to Moore College in Philadelphia to pursue this field.
“I was thinking about quitting my freshman year, just because it was really hard,” she said. “I was so scared. It took so long. I struggled in school. This is something I want to tell people too – don’t give up.”
Encouraged by some of the awards she won after returning from winter break that year, Frank lobbied to finish her degree and graduated from Moore in 2007. While the next logical step might have been to move from Philadelphia to New York City, she instead began building the portfolio again. Others in Central Pennsylvania.
“I kept making combos,” she said. “It was also the time when the internet really started to make things more achievable and achievable for budding designers like myself, who weren’t around [New York]. MySpace was still very popular at the time, and I used it a lot in marketing. Facebook was amazing, and then of course Instagram. It just sounds so crazy, because at the grassroots level, like, how did all of this happen.”
Having a passion for men’s swimwear, Frank started wearing swimwear, and by 2008 her designs were in many stores.
Sheila Frank works on the pleats of a recycled wedding dress that the client’s mother married in 1980. Frank’s work at her fashion store in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, propelled her onto the national fashion scene, May. 4, 2022. Mark Bynes | pennlive.comMark Baynes | [email protected]
“It just happened really fast, and I’ll say I had no idea what I was doing,” Frank said. “It was great. But from there, I wanted to do more.”
She then moved on to ready-to-wear fashion, but without a large stockpile for people to buy such everyday pieces right off the shelf, she had to switch gears again. By 2013, after a friend of hers requested a design for her wedding dresses, Frank began searching for a market for custom-made formal wear, with fittings taking place in her old bedroom at her parents’ house.
Frank said it took “a lot of determination and drive, no sleep, and she worked huge jobs to make it happen,” but she eventually set up shop at her Mechanicsburg location by 2016.
She said the world of online clothing ordering has only grown since Frank graduated from college, reaching a certain peak during the pandemic. This led stylist Chrissy Metz to access the dress last April. It’s a career shift that, until recently, seemed unlikely for a designer based in Central Pa.
“I’ve had quite a bit of foreplay, I’d like to say with different celebrities [before then]Frank said. “I was able to dress up as Lindsay Lohan’s sister, Ali Lohan. That was a while ago. But I was finding myself, and I was kind of thinking, ‘Do I want to wear celebrity fashion and just have that?'” Do I want to work with real people? But now I feel like I’ve finally found the balance.”
So while her gown worn by Miranda Kerr made headlines among celebrities and politicians at last week’s event in the capital, Frank will continue to produce custom designs and unusual pieces for people who aren’t walking the red carpet anytime soon. .
Her work will appear at the Horizon Bridal trunk show, which begins this weekend in Bethlehem, and will run from May 6 to 27. For more information about her work or details on the Mechanicsburg site, visit Sheila Frank’s website.
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