A Rochester City Center IIDA & AIA Collaborative Event.
Product Runway 2022 was Rochester, New York Chapters of AIA & IIDA's second Product Runway Event ever held. For this event, various design and architecture firms could sign up to participate in creating a one-of-a-kind outfit, fashioned out of interior finish materials. Each team received two Representatives, each representing a different manufacturer, to provide the materials for constructing the piece. Each team also received one Rochester building or landmark as their source of inspiration for their outfit. Each team had to provide their own model, a volunteer from that team, to walk at Rochester Fashion Week, and had about 7 months to conceptualize and construct their outfit for the show.
Team LaBella Associates
Rochester Building: The Aqueduct Bridge
Team Captain: Lindsay Davis
Team Members: Allison Linne, Sarah Leicht, Carla Silvestre-Sales, Barbara Burke, Lindsay Davis, Poorva Mirashi, Meghan Thomans, Sarah Langille, & Stephanie Steinman (me).
Team Model: Meghan Thomas
Sponsors: Tile Wholesalers & Architex
The Building
The Aqueduct Bridge in Rochester, New York spans the Genesee River downtown, and was once, as the name indicates, an aqueduct when it was first built. Constructed in 1842, the aqueduct was converted to a subway line in the 1920s for manufacturing purposes. Today it is a bridge traversed by both people and vehicles. Before the access was closed off, urban explorers and artists could leave their mark on the old structure, making it an amazing gallery of street art.
The Design Process
For the first submission for this event, each team participating created a poster depicting that teams' building or landmark, concept sketches of the proposed garment, proposed materials for the garment, and a short blurb about the design concept. For our design, our team vetted through several sketched ideas before deciding on our final iteration. We drew inspiration from the form of the bridge and how from the outside, it is but simple repeating arched forms, but within it is full of abstract color and pattern.
A collection of early concepts from my personal sketchbook that were brought to the table when we initially began coming up with a direction we wanted to take the garment.
More concepts created during the first brainstorming session for Team LaBella
The Poster
Our first deliverable for the project was after 1 month of initial conceptualization. We were asked to create a poster that would illustrate our proposed garment through a brief description of our inspiration and concept, proposed finishes we would be using to create the garment, and sketches to present our idea. With this, the board of IIDA and AIA members could give constructive feedback to help push the design of the garments for a greater impact when presented at Fashion Week.
The Construction Phase
After critiques were given, we were able to start construction of our garment. For this project, we needed to implement tile from Tile Wholesalers and fabrics from Architex. We ended up selecting several types of glass mosaics for the final design, and for the fabric, we used a privacy curtain fabric and an upholstery fabric. We used a coat pattern for the exterior layer that we altered to obtain the look we needed, and cut and layered long pieces of the privacy curtain fabric along with some tulle to create our "watery" train. The bodysuit was a purchased piece that we painted with fabric paints and the decorative collar was created with fabric and mosaic tile. I primarily assisted in sewing the coat (as only two of us had a sewing machine) and painting some of the patterns in the train.
The Fashion Show
Finally after about 6 weeks of construction we completed our garment and complementary head piece and on October 14th, Meghan Thomas started the second AIA & IIDA Product Runway Fashion Show.
