Lucy W. Baird '10

With three lectures, a section, a punch event and a problem set, time looks tight for Lucy W. Baird ’10.

“I have literally 3 hours if I want to sleep, and I do,” says Baird, who came in fourth in last fall’s challenge. But she isn’t sweating the time crunch.

Baird sets off for Chinatown minutes after receiving her theme and the allotted 24 dollars. She heads straight to her favorite fabric store, and deftly navigates the cramped aisles in search of anything dark blue—her signature color.

“I tend to use certain shapes and certain colors,” says Baird. “People who’ve seen a lot of my stuff can usually pick it out.”

There is no shortage of opportunities for admirers to become familiar with her look. Baird is a member of the Harvard Vestis Council, does costuming for Harvard theater, and is a Harvard fashion show regular.

But she usually has ample time and a heftier budget. For this dress, Baird needs to cut some corners—and she’s unlikely to have enough time to hem them. Luckily, she finds both navy and gold lycra, which conveniently don’t fray and stretch to allow “mistake room” for fitting on the fly.

Armed with fabric, cheap thread and a leftover dollar (“for emergencies”), Baird rushes to her 1 p.m. class. Three hours later, she returns to her lair—a public room in her entryway that she reserved for 24 hours—to start pinning the dress into shape over her dress-form mannequin. Several hours of on-again-off-again work ensue before Baird heads off to the Sablière punch party, hoping she’s in “a fit state to work” when she returns.

She is. But the ticking clock isn’t her only remaining obstacle. After a quick fitting with model Erinn V. Westbrook ’10, Baird sews together the seam of the dress… backwards. Time for take two.

“I think this will work,” she says. “And if not…let’s not think about if not. Let’s think: it’s going to work! It’s going to be amazing! I want to go to bed.”

Minutes before midnight—nine hours before her unfinished problem set is due—Baird eyes her fashionably clad dress-form.

“It’s a cutie,” she says.

After a quick fitting with Westbrook the next morning, Baird adds the final touches and hands in her dress at 11:22. But where is the metropolocity of her outfit? “That’s my challenge right now.”