August 18, 2022
Fashion illustration comes to life
Meredith Wing ’04 creates whimsical fashion illustrations by arranging fruit, vegetables, and flowers into her artby Nancy Hitchcock
Coconut slivers on a wedding dress. Tangerine hats and peapod pants. Meredith Wing ’04 delicately arranges elegant pieces of fruit and vegetables, sprigs of herbs, flower petals, and buds atop her fashion illustrations to create chic three-dimensional art.
Wing’s creative process begins by sketching an illustration with archival technical pens. She then adds color with markers, builds dimension with broccoli earrings, artichoke skirts, and croissant dresses, and, finally, photographs the collage. Wing frequently posts demonstrations on Instagram, the platform that’s given her the biggest exposure since she started Meredith Wing Design in 2012. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Wing’s business took flight when she discovered social media.
“Posting on Instagram has been 100 percent the reason for my business success,” she says.
Thus far, Wing’s whimsical art has been used for packaging for Burt’s Bees, 20-foot-tall murals for the Andaz hotel in New York City, coffee sleeves for the iconic French pastry shop Ladurée in several major cities, and assorted other projects for clients such as Anthropologie, Coach, and American Express.
“Herbal Essences was one of my most exciting jobs because it’s such a household name,” says Wing, who worked on the shampoo and conditioner bio:renew campaign. Grey Advertising provided a narrative for 10 characters, including one named Willow. Wing created stylish illustrations for each character using product ingredients such as mint leaves, grapefruit peel, and coffee fruit flown in from South America.
“It was exciting to see these advertisements come to life in the pages of nearly every major magazine,” enthuses Wing. “My art was also on the storefronts of pharmacies, on global TV ads on major networks, and on billboards around the world.”
At Andover, Wing was president of the art club, had weekly meetings at the Addison Gallery, and won several art and playwriting awards. She majored in English literature in college, studied and worked in Paris for a few years, and then returned to attend Columbia University, earning master’s degrees in French (2009) and architecture (2015). It was during her graduate work in architecture at Columbia that she started posting her personal artwork on Instagram. Clients began admiring her creations. “Soho House reached out to me early on and asked me to go to Coachella—a music festival in California—to create illustrations of celebrities at their events,” she says. “That was a big break in the beginning that gave me the confidence to know that elite institutions were pursuing my services.”
Wing’s most recent project was a week-long residency at The Charleston Place hotel in Charleston, South Carolina, where she led workshops and demonstrated live drawings for guests.
Looking back, Wing says she is happy to have eschewed a more traditional career. “When I was bold enough to create my own path,” she says, “I was able to really thrive.”
Follow Wing on Instagram @moomooi
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