Website design <\/p>\n
Twelve graduating students, 74 looks, and a number of wow! moments describe RISD Apparel\u2019s graduation show. The small size of the class, plus the organization of the presentation, allowed for a richer understanding of the students\u2019 work than is often possible with group shows. A read-through of the designers\u2019 collections reveal how deeply engaged this class was with their work, which is a tribute to the department\u2019s collaborative process.\u201cI think it\u2019s important for them to make a statement about what they think is powerful and beautiful, and then that will carry them further,\u201d said department head Gwen Van Den Eijnde. \u201cIn an art school, you need to engage with fundamental research\u2026those ideas will carry further, much further than your graduation. It\u2019s not just a one year, nine month project, it\u2019s really something that needs to be close to your interests and that will dictate the trajectory of your professional steps.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It often seems that there\u2019s a collective consciousness in fashion, and some of the students\u2019 collections synced with larger trends afoot, among them a preoccupation with the future. So Avidron\u2019s exploration of a \u201cfar-future\u201d where technology has subsumed humanity took the form of dimensional designs with cubist aspects. In this irregularity is hope: As the designer wrote: \u201cImperfection is a key trait that will last beyond humanity\u2026Despite its technological context, it conveys the reflection that as organic beings, we provide unique and important characteristics that cannot be machined out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another overarching fall trend was flight\u2019s connection to freedom. This was explored by Bryce Satow, who incorporated feathers and bird symbolism, to \u201cact,\u201d he wrote, \u201cas these little magic talismans that can help you ascend.\u201d To find a way to rise above, or find a middle way, between fear and desire, Satow referred to philosopher Carl Jung\u2019s idea of the female part of the male psyche, \u201cthe anima.\u201d He created a cast of characters who were dressed for spectacle\u2014and a night out\u2014in body-enhancing, feathered clothes. In his Bird Boy collection, Minwoo Matthew Oh explored through the lens of his Korean and American cultural background. Service is compulsory in his birth country and Oh\u2019s work was defined by a dandyish militarism. \u201cThe work isn\u2019t supposed to be dark or meant to be self-destructing in any way. It\u2019s just my way of trying to navigate my world,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In contrast, Vivian Lin, who works under the name Bibi, embraced the darkness, and horror, as a means of path to catharsis. \u201cI want to humanize the unknown. I invite the audience to consider destruction as a form of creation,\u201d is how she put it. Her voluminous designs, which looked like exoskeletons adorned with the organic shapes of internal organs, were made with materials dense (felted wool and toweling), sticky (latex, wax), and unexpected (kelp and mold).<\/p>\n
Tracy Zhang\u2019s dystopian collection brought together\u00a0Bladerunner<\/em>\u00a0with a lived experience, Beijing\u2019s 2013 \u201cAirpocalypse.\u201d Zhang was very young ant the time and woven into the mystery and gloom of the event for her was a sense of curiosity. \u201cThis collection revisits that sense of adventure, going back to retrace my childhood fantasy, and at the same time, it discovers the absolute brutal reality of a post-apocalyptic landscape,\u201d she wrote. Using reclaimed materials such as foam and faux-fur, she crafted garments that were alternately survivalist and a bit dreamy, as in a look made from home textiles with what she describes as a rococo vibe.\u00a0<\/p>\n The undulations in Olivia Rose Fournier\u2019s work were inspired by the ocean, which also informed her palette. A dress with side tucks that resembled the overlapping marks of water of sand, or the ridges of a scallop shell, was notable.\u201cThrough my work, I give reassurance. Life, like the ocean, is full of changes, but there is hope that everything will be okay in the end,\u201d she wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n Serenity was a quality that illuminated the extremely delicate work of Anna Winters, which grew out of familiar materials and familial relations. Her process was literally homespun: \u201cMany of the textiles developed in this collection were created by hanging vintage textiles\u2014family heirlooms\u2014in the window, allowing light to pass through these pieces and onto garments or fabric where the cast pattern was then traced,\u201d she explained. She captured these through handwork, much of it tone-on-tone, and extremely subtle, in keeping with her interest in \u201cgentle, nondescript, even subconscious acts of memorialization.\u201d For all the quietude of this work, Winters cuts a memorable pair of pants.\u00a0<\/p>\n Like Winters, Jordan Wang also considered the \u201ceveryday,\u201d but in the context of her own feelings of \u201cidentity crisis and cultural anxiety,\u201d and in relation to contemporary Chinese art. \u201cMass-produced objects\u2014cheap, abundant, and overlooked\u2014resonated with me. To be one of many, yet marked as \u201cthe other,\u201d felt like drifting as a plastic bag.\u201d She transformed pain into beauty using takeaway plastic totes to make a floaty, ruffed dress full of romance and drama. There was also a nude mesh dress embellished with mosaic bath tiles, and another style made of wigs and adorned with shiny barrettes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ruolin Bai\u2019s approach to the everyday was through ordinary wardrobe basics like hoodies and track suits, which she\u00a0tasked\u00a0herself\u00a0with making\u00a0extraordinary. One of the ways Bai accomplished this was by painting her collection\u00a0with\u00a0Dunhuangai motifs and those inspired by the Buddhist sculptures she grew up surrounded by, in an effort to add \u201ca touch of the divine to the ordinary.\u201d Nura Dhar also drew on her cultural heritage, referencing Islamic culture, including the Hijab and calligraphy, with an aim at cross-cultural understanding. \u201cI am interested in the infinity inherent within textiles,\u201d she wrote. \u201cA rectangular piece of fabric can be manipulated, draped, and wrapped into a silhouette in endless ways without making any actual interventions. It carries the essence of the sublime because a textile, in its simplest form, holds infinite possibilities.\u201d Dhar\u2019s garments were constructed from lengths of material with minimal cuts, and it was remarkable to see that so much could be done with so little.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Isabel Culow built a collection centered on the idea of dressing and undressing, playing with intimates (corsets, bras, robes, etc.) and the idea of lingerie dressing (exposing what is meant to be hidden). \u201cA game of hide and seek,\u201d is how she phrased it.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s about glimpses\u2014fragments of the body, instead of baring it all.\u201d Be that as it may, Culow\u2019s vision was fully formed and crystal clear on a silk chiffon slip dress, called Ana\u00efs, with a bewitching asymmetry and bare back. There was also an ensemble featuring a boyfriend shirt worn open over a bra with pants over which a \u201cfalling\u201d chartreuse slip dress formed a skirt. Brimming with vintage charm, yet very now was a smoking robe, bralette, and a perfect pair of flowy pajama pants with a high-waisted cummerbund featuring a romantic ribbon corsage.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jersey Bond\u2019s fantasies were of a different order, and were spurred by a move away from her family home of 20 years. Her collection grew out of a poem she wrote which included the lines, \u201cThis work is a chant, \/ a meditation, \/ a visual echo of my essence.\u201d From this she devised\u00a0a number of Tolkein-ish or wood-fairy like creatures, dressed in white, two of whom walked under a giant papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 mushroom-like umbrella. \u201cThe collection represents the idea of finding the beauty of imperfections,\u201d Bond wrote. \u201cMost of my work leans into letting things be and grow on their own and not forcing it.\u201d To that end, she buried wool and marinated a tarp in a pond, and the textures of some of the pieces resemble lichen, or mold. Among the accessories were a pair of \u201cgrass-stained tights.\u201d The pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance of Bond\u2019s collection, and the show\u2019s finale look was a wondrous ruffle-collared robe in a sort of Belle\u00a0Epoch style that was constructed of muslin that had been overlaid with innumerable, confetti-like pieces of white tape that gave it a papery-look.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Website design Twelve graduating students, 74 looks, and a number of wow! moments describe RISD Apparel\u2019s graduation show. 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