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Five designers craft commercial textiles into runway-worthy gowns for FashioNext.
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By Mary Scoviak
Hospitality designers and couturiers have more in common than the pressure to be creative on demand and the constant constraint of doing more with less. The Chicago Museum of History tested just how much with its FashioNext design competition. Built around its Chic Chicago: Couture Treasures from the Chicago History Museum exhibit, FashioNext tasked contestants with rethinking materials in inventive ways to fuse fashion and interior design.
The museum selected five dresses from the exhibition to serve as inspiration pieces, then challenged each designer to sketch out a fresh take on the garment using fabrics supplied by Brentano, an interior design textile manufacturer based in Wheeling, Ill. Those sketches, with fabric samples attached, were submitted to the judging panel which narrowed the field to three finalists who then crafted dresses from their designs.
Taking home top honors were Roger Price and Thomas Walton of Price Walton. The Chicago-based firm based its entry on a Charles Frederick Worth evening gown, but brought the silhouette into the 21st century by reinterpreting the wasp waist as "a silver hornet queen." Brentano drapery fabrics Cord-Ink and Aurora Black Pearl combine to provide the smoky, shimmering palette for the winning dress. Iris Wang, Brentano design director, says the garment stood out in a strong field because of its "impeccable craftsmanship."
Runners-up in the competition were Melissa Serpico Kamhout, Serpico; and Jermikko Shoshanna, Jermikko, both based in Chicago. All three dresses will be part of Brentano and Andreu World America's FashioNext at NeoCon exhibition, where each dress will be paired with a complementary or contrasting Andreu World America chair upholstered in Brentano fabrics. Price Walton's design also will become part of the Chic Chicago exhibition which concludes July 26, and then will become part of the museum's permanent costume collection.
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