Usher Sat On My Backpack
Posted by: Mellany Artmstrong
A highlight of Jordan Mimnall’s internship with stylist Jimi Urquiaga was getting to spend a day with Usher.
“I was unloading garment bags on the steps by myself, and I just hear singing in the hallway and I go ‘Holy —-, Usher’s here!’” she recalled. “He walked in, and I thought, ‘This is not happening right now.’”
Jordan, a senior Fashion Design major, chose to intern with Urquiaga last summer because of his work with musicians.
“I’ve always been inspired by rappers, I love rap music, and I wanted to work on a rap music video or maybe work with an artist or on a music video,” she said. “I found Jimi because he was known for styling for Ariana Grande, Juicy J and The Weeknd, and I love them.”
Jordan took the Megabus to New York City on days when she had work with Urquiaga.
“I went up whenever he had a job, so it wasn’t a set schedule,” she said. “Sometimes he would let me know last-minute, and I’m like, ‘I need three hours to get up there, you know that.’”
But the stressful parts of the internship were worth it because of the time she got to spend with Usher. The singer/songwriter came to Urquiaga’s studio that day for a photo shoot for a magazine. Jordan was assisting the stylist when Usher arrived.
“He was like, ‘How are you? I’m Usher,’” she said. “We had a full-on conversation, and then I took him upstairs and we met up with Jimi. But he gave me a kiss on the cheek and a hug.”
As the photo shoot progressed, Jordan helped with styling the different outfits Usher wore.
“He let me give my input, too, which was really cool,” she said.
During some downtime from the shoot, Usher happened to sit on Jordan’s backpack.
“It was sitting on a chair, and he was like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, whose backpack did I sit on?’ And I was like, ‘No, it’s ok, it’s fine, that was mine,’” she laughed.
After the shoot, Usher hung around to eat a sandwich and chat with Jordan, all of which made her friends envious, but excited.
“They couldn’t believe it,” she said. “When I got home, they were all in the apartment waiting for me and had drinks and stuff. We just had a party.”
Pretty heady stuff for an art student from Lancaster, who learned about Moore while in high school.
“One of my art teachers told me there’s this all-girls school in Philadelphia, it’s small but they really focus on their students, and I think you would really fit in good there” she said. “And I loved it.”
“I liked that is was a smaller community where everybody knew everybody, and the teachers know you by your first name,” she said. She hopes to design for rappers and hip-hop artists after graduation, and possibly style music videos for them.
“I also really love textile design and I focus all of my designs around textiles that I make,” she said. She designed all of the fabrics in her senior collection.
Jordan’s brush with fame continues – she met seamstress Tatiana Bekker of Tatiana Tailoring, the personal seamstress for Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, while on the job for Urquiaga on the set of the Today show.
“I kept in contact with her and she texted me in September and said ‘I need help with Kanye’s childrenswear Adidas line, can you come up and help me?’ I was like, omigosh, yes!” she said. “I helped sew a dress for North West, and I also sewed a couple of things for Saint, too.”
Jordan travels to New York on an as-needed basis to help Tatiana. She has yet to meet Kanye, but has come close.
“Kanye came in one day, but I didn’t get to see him because they shut every door and they locked it,” she said. “All of these lights and this camera crew came in and they shut all the doors. I thought, ‘Dang it.’ But it was so cool!”