Party Rentals is the title of My Dinh's senior thesis that takes birthday parties as its starting point. Conveying the sense of joy and self-celebration, the collection uses popular birthday party iconography, materials and graphics to create highly elevated, rich textured silhouettes with a hint of urban wear influences. Merging mixed-media fabrication with suggestive forms, the collection portrays the fragmented and disposable facet of birthday party decorations.
With the intention of romanticizing utility materials and details, ribstop, drawstring, eyelet and stopper are used with decorative ribbons and paper-like material that is Tyvek. In order to create a frosted effect, Tyvek is peeled into two layers. Only the top skin is kept and bonded with matte vinyl seen on the long coat dress with cascading flounces. Flock dotted tulle is also fused with the vinyl keeping it sheer for the highly sculpted ruffles. In look Two, basic skirt block is deconstructed into nearly 100 pattern pieces that build up 45 bows growing out of white ribstop fabric that is attached to a drawstring convoluted cutout.
Non-conforming to traditional notions of elevated dressing, the collection introduces heritage Indian silk brocade in an unconventional way. My Dinh collaborates with Devin Osorio, a fibers student from Savannah College of Art and Design on the creation of patches,. Osorio's illustrations of children's birthday party are converted into digital print patches on silk dupioni and intricate 3-D patchwork taking advantage of brocade's rich texture. Developed from Dinh's illustrations, the machine embroidered patches have also been given a graphic treatment with the use of pop culture birthday emoticon like pizza slices, cupcakes and "Mom's Favorite" badges. The diverse collection of patches are visually composed onto body-contouring tops, pullover tank top or sprinkled on white, dotted tulle overlaid Tyvek hoodie of look Five.
Birthday themed table cloth and laminated Alexander Henry's midnight snack printed cotton are shredded into 5/8" strips and woven with various kinds of ribbons. In look Four, the same images are pierced through non-skid rug pad. String ends and loopy ribbons derived from piñata produce bold fringy texture in dynamic form. Lenticular plastic sheets are also cut thin and gradually woven into the wide-leg, silver pants creating bold patterns and graphic movements on the body. The technique of pictorial basket weave open the space to re-design the ready-made prints and transform flat surface into 3-D playground.
The shiny, woven skirt in baby pink and blue is inspired from young girls' party hairstyle, braids and pigtails. The construction is all done on the dress form by running small balloon strings through rows of ball-head pins. The braided trim that run along the hem is customized by inserting red and pink curling ribbons into cyberlox mesh tubes functioning as embellishment and structural support.
