Twelve graduating students, 74 looks, and a number of wow! moments describe RISD Apparel’s graduation show. The small size of the class, plus the organization of the presentation, allowed for a richer understanding of the students’ work than is often possible with group shows. A read-through of the designers’ collections reveal how deeply engaged this class was with their work, which is a tribute to the department’s collaborative process.“I think it’s important for them to make a statement about what they think is powerful and beautiful, and then that will carry them further,” said department head Gwen Van Den Eijnde. “In an art school, you need to engage with fundamental research…those ideas will carry further, much further than your graduation. It’s not just a one year, nine month project, it’s really something that needs to be close to your interests and that will dictate the trajectory of your professional steps.”
It often seems that there’s a collective consciousness in fashion, and some of the students’ collections synced with larger trends afoot, among them a preoccupation with the future. So Avidron’s exploration of a “far-future” where technology has subsumed humanity took the form of dimensional designs with cubist aspects. In this irregularity is hope: As the designer wrote: “Imperfection is a key trait that will last beyond humanity…Despite its technological context, it conveys the reflection that as organic beings, we provide unique and important characteristics that cannot be machined out.”
Another overarching fall trend was flight’s connection to freedom. This was explored by Bryce Satow, who incorporated feathers and bird symbolism, to “act,” he wrote, “as these little magic talismans that can help you ascend.” To find a way to rise above, or find a middle way, between fear and desire, Satow referred to philosopher Carl Jung’s idea of the female part of the male psyche, “the anima.” He created a cast of characters who were dressed for spectacle—and a night out—in 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’s work was defined by a dandyish militarism. “The work isn’t supposed to be dark or meant to be self-destructing in any way. It’s just my way of trying to navigate my world,” he wrote.
In contrast, Vivian Lin, who works under the name Bibi, embraced the darkness, and horror, as a means of path to catharsis. “I want to humanize the unknown. I invite the audience to consider destruction as a form of creation,” 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).
Tracy Zhang’s dystopian collection brought together Bladerunner with a lived experience, Beijing’s 2013 “Airpocalypse.” Zhang was very young ant the time and woven into the mystery and gloom of the event for her was a sense of curiosity. “This 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,” 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.
The undulations in Olivia Rose Fournier’s 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.“Through 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,” she wrote.
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: “Many of the textiles developed in this collection were created by hanging vintage textiles—family heirlooms—in the window, allowing light to pass through these pieces and onto garments or fabric where the cast pattern was then traced,” she explained. She captured these through handwork, much of it tone-on-tone, and extremely subtle, in keeping with her interest in “gentle, nondescript, even subconscious acts of memorialization.” For all the quietude of this work, Winters cuts a memorable pair of pants.
Like Winters, Jordan Wang also considered the “everyday,” but in the context of her own feelings of “identity crisis and cultural anxiety,” and in relation to contemporary Chinese art. “Mass-produced objects—cheap, abundant, and overlooked—resonated with me. To be one of many, yet marked as “the other,” felt like drifting as a plastic bag.” 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.
Ruolin Bai’s approach to the everyday was through ordinary wardrobe basics like hoodies and track suits, which she tasked herself with making extraordinary. One of the ways Bai accomplished this was by painting her collection with Dunhuangai motifs and those inspired by the Buddhist sculptures she grew up surrounded by, in an effort to add “a touch of the divine to the ordinary.” Nura Dhar also drew on her cultural heritage, referencing Islamic culture, including the Hijab and calligraphy, with an aim at cross-cultural understanding. “I am interested in the infinity inherent within textiles,” she wrote. “A 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.” Dhar’s 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.
Isabel Clulow 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). “A game of hide and seek,” is how she phrased it. “It’s about glimpses—fragments of the body, instead of baring it all.” Be that as it may, Clulow’s vision was fully formed and crystal clear on a silk chiffon slip dress, called Anaïs, 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 “falling” 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.
Jersey Bond’s 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, “This work is a chant, / a meditation, / a visual echo of my essence.” From this she devised a number of Tolkein-ish or wood-fairy like creatures, dressed in white, two of whom walked under a giant papier-mâché mushroom-like umbrella. “The collection represents the idea of finding the beauty of imperfections,” Bond wrote. “Most of my work leans into letting things be and grow on their own and not forcing it.” 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 “grass-stained tights.” The pièce de résistance of Bond’s collection, and the show’s finale look was a wondrous ruffle-collared robe in a sort of Belle Epoch style that was constructed of muslin that had been overlaid with innumerable, confetti-like pieces of white tape that gave it a papery-look.
