Mexican-born Art Institute student Yalary Fuentes has never presented her designs on a runway before, but she is about to hit the spotlight in a big way -- at New York Fashion Week.

For the fourth straight season, the Art Institute is teaming up with the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week and organizing a show that will showcase the designs of 12 students on fashion's biggest stage.

Of these 12 students, Fuentes' designs were chosen to be showcased on Feb.17. During an interview with Latin Post, the aspiring fashion designer said she is very excited for the event.

"I'm proud to be a Mexican showing my work on an international stage," she stated. "I want to show that no one can stop you from your dreams. This is a dream come true."

Fuentes grew up in Mexico, where she was inspired by her mother's floral design business and began to create her own designs by draping blankets and drawing models she saw in magazines. In 2013, she moved to New York City to pursue her studies in fashion design and interned with Mimi Plange and Charlotte Ronson.

"Sewing was part of my life ... My mom taught me to sew and she taught me the basics like stitching the bottom of the pants. Also draping with my grandmother really helped me control the fabric and give it a different feel to the dresses," she noted. "So the basic stuff that my mom and grandma taught me was really helpful to manage the fabric in a different way."

Fuentes' road to Fashion Week was a competitive endeavor, as she was selected from a formidable pool of students.

"I think there were 20 art institutes that are eligible and they had to submit work for the show," said mentor, producer and director of the show, Scott French.

The Art Institute has a number of schools around the country, so each school had to pick their top three students. French was involved with the New York selection, but he admitted that he did not feel right picking the rest of the students.

"For the interest of fairness, I don't feel it's fair [to choose work from other schools] when I helped select the people from New York City," he noted. "All we tell them is the names of the students. Then they base it on [the] presentation. It's really a blind jury."

Having been chosen as one of the participants, Fuentes had to narrow down her original collection of 10 designs to six.

"They all submit 10 outfits for the show in sketch form and we then pick the six that are going to be shown," French noted. "We all look at 120 garments and we edit it down to the 72 that are going to be shown. It's more about the mechanical than on the artistic."

For her first collection, Fuentes was inspired by the famed Iraqi-British architect Zaha Mohammad Hadid, who has become known for her neofuturistic architecture.

"I was really inspired by one of her quotes that she said, 'There are 360 degrees, so why stick to one?' Basically, I want to go beyond that in fashion," Fuentes explained. "I recreated some of her architectural structures in my garments."

Fuentes first discovered Hadid when she saw her exhibition with Chanel a few years ago.

"I fell in love with her work," she said. "Immediately, I wanted to translate her work with mine and combine it. I needed to do a collection and that was the perfect moment to do this.

"I researched her work. I looked at one of her first designs, which was in London," she added. "I started doing some silhouettes, playing around with models and with the fabric."

Part of the research for putting together the collection was coming up with fabrics that would recreate Hadid's work while also following Fuentes' theme, which is called "Queen of Curves."

"I wanted the women who use my garments to be feel powerful and be happy with what they were wearing. So I don't have a specific body for my clothes," she noted. "Latin American people are very curvy. I like to make clothes for my type of body and I want to make people happy with what they wear."

"My main fabric is plastic and I wanted to use basic ones as well like cotton and silk. They are part of my collection and it was fun to work with plastic and create an elastic dress."

But the creation of the first dress was the most difficult part. She and her teacher worked months on getting the first one right and making sure she felt happy about it.

"One of my first dresses ... took me three months. First, I sewed it and my teacher pushed me," she noted. "She told me 'You can do better than this.' So I had to redo the dress like every week until we were both happy with it. The others were like two weeks."

"My collection is very detail-oriented. When you start, you see one thing and then you realize you have to fix one thing or the other. Once I got the main [idea] I wanted for the collection, it was easy to start creating it."

The final collection is made up mostly of blacks and whites and that was also something Fuentes advocated for from the start.

"Zaha does not use to much color. She uses those colors [black and white]. For me, they are elegant and they are for everything," she noted. "Black and white go with everything."

French noted that the use of those colors was perfect, especially since most of the student designs are filled with black and white except for the last student, whose collection is very colorful.

"Yalary has a really developed eye as she follows high fashion. Her collection is extremely conceptual. It's nothing you would necessarily see walking on the street. The fabrics she is using is plastic almost and combined that with waffle tech fabrics. She has put together a collection of extremes," he said. "If it was for me, Yalary would have closed the show because it is grand and it is the showstopper. There is a lot of black and white and it makes a big statement."

Fashion Week is known for being stressful and extremely time sensitive. The behind-the-scenes action starts weeks before the actual show and preparation has to be done with time in order for a runway to be successful. A lot of the preparation includes choosing the music, making sure the models fit into the dresses, and having time to practice on the runway.

Luckily for Fuentes and her fellow art institute students, French is in charge of most of these preparations.

"I do everything from negotiate the space, cast the actual show of designers, oversee the work and give them the deadlines," French explained. "I basically run the show as their publicist would if they were a major designer. We cast all the models and the next thing we do is work out the staging, the lighting, the music and figure out the hair and makeup. We also figure out the press schedule. So all the designers have to do is make their work and show up."

However, Fuentes does credit the Art Institute for teaching them some of the most important parts of the fashion industry. One of the crucial things she has learned is how to manage her time.

"Running around New York carrying all the fabric is definitely not like in Mexico. Time management, organization and organizing the way you get your stuff is something I have learned throughout the process," she said.

She also stated that the school has also prepared her to look at the small details that are crucial when preparing a show. "Sometimes the finish, maybe the dress I made is too long and the model cannot walk in it. Or maybe the model is a little too skinny so I need to adjust the whole dress for her. Those kind of details are simple but crucial."

"[The Art Institute] has really supported us and has been helpful in organizing, especially Scott French," she enthused. "I am really happy and blessed to have all these people around me."

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