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 Fraying and finishing Student designers prepare for the big show
Anne Novotny spreads a shredded but flouncy satin silver "skirt" over
her jeans, bends her knees out and waddles in place like a duck.
Flipping up the garment's underbelly and exposing its diaper-like
bottom, the student fashion designer points out two holes for the
wearer's legs.
"It shows a grittier side. The idea of hard work and passion and what
people do for their passion," Novotny says about her ballet "look" that
will come out on dancers as the finale to the undergraduate fashion
design show at the School of the Art Institute (pictured). "You just see
this sort of facade, and I think fashion echoes that."
On the tenth floor of the SAIC high-rise, the student designers are
strung out on their fabric of choice---be it cashmere, Lycra, angora or
plain cotton--perhaps too close to their work to enjoy the fresh
aesthetic they created. Novotny sustains her energy to discuss her
"nostalgia garb" as a mourning of her childhood, wanting to be an
effortlessly graceful ballerina. "I think there was this inner tutu
wanting to burst out of me for years, and it's finally getting a chance
to shine," she says.
In the main fitting room, a thong-bearing model is wrapped with a
shifting cast of five dressers. They strap her into a corset as she
pulls up her noisy black pants that are heavy with strands of pink
crystal beads. Seeing how the models' breasts barely smoosh into her
corset, the designer deflates inside her pink zip-up sweatshirt. "You'll
need to remove a few ribs," a professor facetiously criticizes from the
judge's table a few feet back. The model makes a nervous expression, and
Eva Wittels' friends assure her that the other model is skinnier.
Wittels mutters something about refusing to make alterations; she is
damn tired, and her instructors told her to finish the garment early for
the recent Playboy gala. The glare of fluorescent colors and the sound
of clinking beads translate into an undeniable attention-grabbing look.
The Miami native's inspiration of the Brazilian Carnivale radiates off a
floor-length coat; its puffs of pink, orange and yellow produce a glam
peacockish appearance that would suit a drag queen.
A few pieces later, a less glitz, more gore set of garments suctions
onto the model's figure. The vintage camouflage-print fabric--scrapped
from local thrift shops and sewn into fresh yardage--forms a strapless
evening gown with a belt of ammo and ruffles past the hip that extend
into a dragging train. A cartoon-style splash of blood, made of closely
stitched red sequins and beads, covers half the model's rib cage and
seeps under the ruffled layers.
"Of course I am saying war is bad, but to me it's more of an
emotional response rather than a political one," Shoshana Tuszer begins
in a Long Island accent, elaborating on the image she uses in each
garment to represent bloodshed. "I made red blood spots out of sequins
because we cannot hide from it, death."
Equally engaged in his look's concept, Wilson Widjaja's work has the
clean aesthetic of modern color-block paintings. Worn as a sleeveless
dress with matching heels, the red and white felt sewn back-to-back
makes a model look more like an animated card of hearts from Alice in
Wonderland. His homemade shoes' metal heels prick through the center of
three-inches of equally curvaceous layers of the felt.
On the body, the material folds over itself to resemble a fabric
store bolt for the dress' marshmallow bottom. But when Widjaja lays the
fabric flat on the hallway floor, he proudly presents the felt's new
geometric shape with bucket-sized circular cutouts in the center of the
strip of material.
The buzz from the fitting room fizzles in the hallway and evolves
into a near silence inside a compact room of knitters listening to music
through their headphones. Novotny is in here, reaching for clumps of
pale pink ribbons that, sewn together at the top in groups of six or
seven, resemble the streamers that fly off girls' bicycle handles.
Stationed at an isolated worktable, her friend Marisa Cheung bends
over a knitting machine, her face inches above her "subway look,"
clothing inspired by and for the working class. In a glance, the color
scheme of blue, white and brown is unexciting. However, as she runs her
fingers along the stitches of a shirt to show how she mimics the Howard
"El" tracks, she illuminates the incredible attention to detail.
The hard-worked bodies drift among motionless nude forms in a pool of
natural sunlight. The light floods in from windows facing the cityscape,
where the street stretches out ten floors below the commotions over
clothing.
Novotny still zips around. She remains at a distance from her classic
pancake-style tutu dress with a fitted bodice of worn toe-shoe scraps
signed by the shoes' dancers. The dress just debuted on a Joffrey
ballerina at the company's recent gala. She says she will not sell the
piece at the sale on May 14, when the designers lay out their work with
price tags so people can purchase them. She will return the four hundred
pairs, $6,000 worth of Joffrey ballet shoes, now in the form of
garments, to their rightful owner. "Fashion 2004" takes place at the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago Ballroom, 112 South Michigan, (312)899-5155, through May 7. The
Garment Sale takes place May 14, from 10am-6pm, at the SAIC Department
of Fashion Design, 37 South Wabash, 10th Floor, (312)899-5168.
Also by Jessica Herman War zone
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