IIDA Boston 2011 Fashion Show

Last Thursday’s IIDA* New England 2011 Fashion Show was a big success. It was a lot of hard work but worth it in the end.

It was my first year involved in the fashion show as I had previously been busy with school commitments. It was great to start with this year since it had a great theme of ‘Iconography’. We had to select something iconic to create costumes based upon. We selected this image of Buzz Aldrin on the moon. We focused on creating a male costume that was similar to the typical astronaut suite. For the 2 other costumes we created 2 female costumes that were a bit more fun with a focus on future space fashion. A little different than Zenon fashion, no?

Besides the great theme, we had great products to work with. Part of the fashion show is to creatively use products that we use in our design projects. This year we partnered up with Stone Source for tile and store, Spinneybek for leather, and Cambridge Architectural for metal mesh. They ended up working so well for our theme.

Here is a run down of the event…

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We had to get costumes over to the hotel so a few of use left early so we could set up and get our 3 lovely models all set up. Once everything was up on the 7th floor staging area we headed down to the lobby for a celebratory drink. We ended up with shots of Patron…

 

Back up stairs.. let the work begin! Lots of makeup and an announcement…

 

We started with a shimmery base white coat on Laura. Then silvery base coat on Megan…

I added the blue to Megan’s hair since her accent color was blue. Alissa added lots of dark base to my coworker/model Brett…

 

Having a great time and some other teams getting ready…

We decided on bands on all of models’ faces so they were added in the different colors to match their accents…

 

On goes the red accent on Laura. Then A LOT of glitter on top of all of that… (click the R picture to enlarge it)

Megan getting some touch ups. I think she looks amazing here…

 

Anna, a hairstylist prior to switching careers, working on Laura’s hair…

 

Geared up! We had to get our models dressed up in preparation of judging. The gear is hot and heavy so we had to time to correctly so they would not get too tired or sore from wearing it…

 

Obviously you should take embarrassing photos of your coworkers as well as the models…

Judging time! (yeah I know there is a girl getting dressed behind us. no big!) Megan explained our theme and the materials we used to the judges prior to the big runway walk…

 

The hours flew by preparing for the event but it started! Former coworker Mai is a co-chair so she was one of the beginning MC’s. There were more introductions but then it was time for the show to start!

 

Title: “Poche”- inspired by graphic patterns used in drawings

 

Title: “WeARHOL”- using iconic Warhol images, such as Marilyn

Title: “The serpent. The ultimate icon.”

 

Title: “The Beatles(ography)”- yellow submarine (L), Octopus’s garden and strawberry fields(R)

 

Title: “Dweller Among the Clouds”

 

Title: “All Hail McQueen”- they painted the models on stage with paint sprayers

 

Title: “Paint by Numnbers”- including Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Shepard Fairey’s Obama, and Warhol’s “Turquoise Marilyn”

Title: “Living Popart”

And ours… “Man on the Moon”

Brett walking down the record 90′ long runway in front of a record 1,000 person crowd…

The flag was made of a large wood dowel with a sheet of foam core attached to it. It was then covered in tile and leather…

Megan at the end of the runway posing in front of the judges…

Laura making it down the runway…

Brett handed off the flag to Megan while he did the moonwalk to a cheering crowd prior to walking back…

 

Title: “Magic Kingdom Come”

I wish I had a better picture of the main headpiece. It was detailed beautifully. Each of the costumes were stunning. Look at the costumed guy on the left, and then to the woman at the lectern standing next to him to get a perspective at the size of each of these 3 costumes. Crazy…

 

Title: “Icon of the Virgin”

In total there were 22 submissions, including a few schools. I missed a bit of the ones after us since I ran back up to the room to get a scissor incase Laura wanted to cut off the HEAVY metal mesh skirt that was digging into her hips. She sucked it up and wore the skirt for the final procession of all the models.

Then the awards…

WOOOHOOOO!!! We won an award!!! We were awarded with Best Interpretation of Theme.

After Bergmeyer’s “Magic Kingdom Come” we were bummed since their peices were stunning so it seemed like we had no chance for any of the awards. Thankfully we got one of specific awards while they picked up best in show.

In all the night was a blast. I don’t have photos of the after party since I didn’t want to spill anything on my camera and what happens at the after party, stays at the after party! I got home after 2 and Friday was a l-o-n-g day but it was so worth it.

*IIDA= Institute of International Interior Design Association.