Fashion & Style
R4 Fashion Showcases Emerging Eco-Friendly Designers
A squadron of sustainable tech nerds from Waterloo showed a packed crowd at their R4 Fashion event that going green can be high-fashion as well.
On Friday, The Sustainable Technology Education Project threw two fashion shows, with the first featuring AIME, Carrie Hayes, Thieves, and Rachel Chan. The second showcased a handful of fresh talent, with the designers competing in an Emerging Designers Competition.
The established designers were tasked with producing an eco-friendly trio of looks: casual, dress, and experimental. The best of the bunch were AIME's slinky, tasseled, kimono-style dress; and Thieves' frock with the nipped-in waist and pointy shoulders.
(A production note: Rachel Chan's collection of super-tight white dresses and separates plastered with pop cans were cheesy enough, but they were even more ill-served by the models wearing them. Several were stuffed into dresses that were much too small for them. This was a recurring theme throughout the show, with the majority of the models much heavier than the standard, but not a nicely uniform plus-size, either. It detracted from some of the ensembles - more "real-world," I suppose, but a real distraction from the lines of the clothing.)
Heidi Ackerman - in my opinion, one of the very best designers working in Canada today - wowed the crowd with her sexy-goths-in-space knits, bulging frocks, and out-there cork waders. She eventually took home the prize for the competition, and rightfully so.
Among the emerging designers, the few standouts included Naca's beige linen romper that laced up the back, and some of Olga Tigirlas' pieces that contrasted soft pink silks and sexy black leather-like material. (Other designers competing included AnieMac and Cherry Blossom.)
Tigirlas also had the best "experimental" piece, in her pink, black, and white plastic cocktail frock that looked like a frothy ballerina costume with edge. The pouf was like the best in sustainable fashion - lovely, but surely with a surprising story behind it. Here's to examining where exactly our clothes come from.
Photos by Jonathan Loek.
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I'd agree that some of the pieces were well done, though what stuck out at this show was the campy/tacky Coke cans and Arizona tea cans on the models. Not bad for a group of students.
Yep, I really wish that "eco-friendly" clothing and neo-hippie(think MGMT) weren't synonymous, and that "eco-friendly" and fashion forward weren't mutually exclusive, at least in the young fashion "designer" sphere.
I hope more [young] designers can invent reclaimed materials into more fashion-forward clothing that looks less like derivative sci-fi or hippie costuming. it's just not that difficult.
Wasn't feeling Heidi Ackerman's collection. Her pieces were not flattering to the figure. Instead they seemed blocky and boring.
I favored Naca's safari inspired pieces. Simple designs, clean lines. Perfect for the MEC shopper attending a gala event.
That's a pretty ridiculous statement about the plus-size models in Chan's collection. Perhaps the writer of this blog likes standard model emaciation, but for me, I found the ever-so-slightly fuller-figured models a welcome relief. Furthermore, I thought the clothing looked better on them than it would have on anorexic-looking models. The girls' contours gave the outfits an attractive shape. I find skeletal figures FAR more distracting to outfits than curves.
R4 Fashion show definitely brought up a lot of hot topics in fashion: the issue of toxic chemicals, fair trade, and labor. It also gave a lot of emerging designers a platform to address the issue. Trends come and go,but I think it's important that designers like Monica Mei are willing to put the effort and the money because they understand the impact it has on the environment.
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