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Around the Design World in 180 Words: Awards Edition
By Stephanie Murg on April 26, 2011 11:01 PM

Pratt fashion design students Theresa Deckner, Matthew Bruch, and Juan Pozo with their winning sportswear designs. (Photo: Jennifer Strader)

Among the looks on display at tomorrow’s Pratt Institute Fashion Show will be three that have emerged victorious in a semester-long sportswear design competition sponsored by The Cotton Board. The Pratt students behind the designs are Juan Pozo (his prepster ensemble took the $5,000 first-place prize), Matthew Bruch (with a blue ombre tweed swing coat designed for a modern-day Jackie Kennedy), and Theresa Deckner (who fearlessly combined colors and prints).
The One Club has announced the finalists for the 2011 One Show, One Show Design, and One Show Interactive awards. To learn who wins the coveted gold, silver, and bronze pencils, you’ll have to wait for the One Show Festival, which begins May 9.
With the May 3 deadline to enter the the first annual Core77 Design Awards approaching, the organizers have announced the 15 jury teams that will deliberate in locales from Copenhagen to Palo Alto before announcing their decisions in live web broadcasts. We can’t help but be partial to the hometown teams: Steven Heller is the fearless leader of the graphics, branding, and indentity squad, while Julie Lasky is heading up the products and equipment jury.

Design student imagines fashion’s future
Melrose native earns $25,000 scholarship

By Christopher Muther

Globe Staff / February 24, 2011
NEW YORK — Melrose native Ruby Gertz got her start in fashion by designing her own prom gowns — and her little sister’s bat mitzvah dress. These days, Gertz is looking at the fashion industry from a more global standpoint. The 21-year-old Gertz, a student at Pratt Institute, was recently awarded the prestigious $25,000 Geoffrey Beene National Scholarship. It’s one of four such scholarships presented each year. To qualify, students were required to complete an application that included creating a new concept for the retail store of the future.

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“It had to be a store concept that isn’t currently available, so you’re filling a void,’’ Gertz explained last week over chocolate milkshakes at a Union Square diner. “So I created a store where the clothes from the previous season are sent back to the store to get cut and resewn into pieces for the next season. The idea is that the clothing is constantly being recycled and updated. They really liked it.’’

A store where clothes are sent back and reconfigured for the following season may sound a tad too practical in the often fanciful world of fashion. But Gertz, who describes her style as “Urban Outfitters — but a little less grungy and hip,’’ designs from a functional standpoint. She’s not a fan of excess ruffles, feathers, or beading. She prefers to strip clothing down to its basics for a specific purpose. Lately, she’s taken an interest in sportswear and swimwear, eschewing the over-the-top couture that interests many of her classmates.

“I sympathize more with the common woman than the glamazon model,’’ said Gertz. “They look hot in anything. It doesn’t take much talent as a designer to make them look good.’’

Gertz has been sewing since sixth grade, when she first became fascinated with the idea of customizing clothing. By the time she was a sophomore in high school, she was making her own patterns and creating original garments. She eventually hopes to return to her first love of creating custom designs, but in the interim, she wants to bring her interest in the technical and functional side of clothing to the mass market.

“I think a lot of people discredit the mass market,’’ she said. “They say it’s not artistic. But I think there’s a lot of potential to do interesting things in that field. Everyone wants to be the next Alexander McQueen, but I think there’s room for more.’’

Pratt Institute and Ralph Pucci's Paper Push

by DAVID MOIN

Posted THURSDAY DECEMBER 9, 2010

From WWD.COM

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LAUNCH SLIDESHOW 9 images

Pratt + Paper & Ralph Pucci exhibit.

Photo By ANTOINE BOOTZ

Pratt + Paper & Ralph Pucci exhibit.

Photo By: ANTOINE BOOTZ

LAUNCH SLIDESHOW 9 images

Paper can be pretty mundane, but for Pratt Institute and Ralph Pucci International, it’s an artistic medium.

In an unusual collaboration, Pratt students have draped, dressed and otherwise adorned Pucci’s new “Girl 2” collection of abstract, featureless mannequins, in paper. It’s a clean, modern and surreal display, devoid of color — white paper on white mannequins in Pucci’s white Gallery Nine showroom at 44 West 18th Street.

The presentation called Pratt + Paper & Ralph Pucci, will be celebrated today with an opening party, and ties into the industry’s Visual Market Week, Dec. 6-10. On Jan. 10, the show hits Broadway, in Macy’s windows.

“Every student had a different way of manipulating paper,” said Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, chair of the department of fashion design at Pratt Institute. “They curled it or folded it, or braided it or wrinkled it — sometimes so much it became like soft fabric.” One student, Dara Rosen, laser cut the paper into small circles and wove them together like knitted fabric, and from that draped a sheath dress, Pailes-Friedman said. “The students were really able to abstract the surface and create texture. ”

Originally, 50 students from four different disciplines at Pratt — interior, industrial and fashion design and fine arts —were challenged to create designs and sculptures in paper. “Paper is a common denominator for all art and design,” Pailes-Friedman noted.

From that field, about half were selected for the Pucci exhibit, intermingling the mannequins with four sculptures as well as a mural by one of the students, and a panel of judges this week selected what they thought were the best three creations overall. The judges were interior designer Vicente Wolf; Anna Sui; Linda Fargo of Bergdorf Goodman; furniture designer Jens Risom; Macy’s Nicole Fischelis; fashion agent Greg Mills, and photographer Deborah Turbeville. The winners received 12-inch miniature mannequins in gold, silver and bronze leaf created by Pucci sculptor Michael Evert. For the paper on mannequin forms, first place went to Dana Otto; second place, Meredith Lyon and Beatrice Weiland, and third Place, Thom Forsyth.

The winning paper sculpture design was by Su Ting Chen and Samantha Johnson.

Ralph Pucci and Thomas Schutte, president, Pratt Institute, after running into each other at an event, decided to collaborate on a project. Pucci knew he didn’t want to stage a more typical show with student fashions for the mannequins, and left it to Pailes-Friedman to come up with a concept. “I remember I wanted to make it interdisciplinary with four departments, but I thought, how could I teach people to sew? I just couldn’t teach everybody, but they all know how to use paper,” she said. “Each department head did a master class about what could be done with paper.”

ldquo;The kids picked up on what Pucci is all about, and also created in their own voice,” said Ralph Pucci. “They all have a fresh, innocent perspective. I hope they keep that spirit as they go forward in life and business.”

Pratt’s Miracle on 34th Street

January 18, 2011, 5:24 pm

Fashions in paper created by Pratt students Thom Forsyth, James Ian Killinger, and Chia Lin Hsu (photos by Antoine Bootz)

By Carolyn Mooney

The Christmas displays are gone, but tourists are still gawking at the windows of Macy’s flagship store in Manhattan.

The windows are now featuring the white-on-white designs of Pratt Institute students, who created sculptural works and clothing out of white paper to “dress” a high-fashion line of mannequins. One mannequin sports an Elizabethan-like ruff that spirals around the entire body. Another wears a laser-cut swag. Yet others are adorned in confections that look like frothy, feathery, tufted, or origami-like dresses.

“I hesitate to call them dresses,” says Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, acting chair of fashion design at Pratt (and a menswear designer), who oversaw the project. “They’re more like … sculptures for the body.”

Some two dozen Pratt students from the fields of fashion, interior design, industrial design, and the fine arts created the pieces as part of a semester-long seminar. The project was a collaboration with Ralph Pucci, head of a well-known mannequin company based in New York, who, after meeting Pratt’s president, Thomas F. Schutte, had suggested that the students dress Pucci mannequins.

From there it sounded like an episode from Project Runway: Create a design for the mannequins using only white paper. Emphasize the design. No sewing necessary, since not all the students knew how to sew.

Pratt designs featured in a Macy's window (photo by KC Weakley)

“But we all know how to work with paper,” says Pailes-Friedman, who was inspired by the creativity of students from multiple disciplines. In the end, you couldn’t tell which students from which majors created which pieces, she says.

Dana Otto, a senior industrial-design major from State College, Pa., had been working with laser ornamentation in product design. She decided to apply the technique to construct a dress “that had a lot of volume and really utilized the structural integrity of paper.”

The seminar ended with awards given to the top works (Otto won first prize), and an exhibition of the student work, called “Pratt + Paper & Ralph Pucci,” held at the Pucci showroom in December. A blog at Women’s Wear Daily, a bible of the fashion world, called the exhibition “a clean, modern, and surreal display, devoid of color.” Another visitor was Paul Olszewski, director of windows for Macy’s Herald Square. He knew right away that he wanted to feature the students’ designs in his windows.

(photo by Eddie Belaval)

“I was blown away,” he says. “I thought, I have to put it in the windows. It’s so what we’re about—we love showcasing artists and getting that wonderful fusion of art and fashion.” Some 3,500 people an hour see the windows, he says. “It’s one of those instances where people literally stop to look at everything.”

The six Pratt windows, which face Broadway, will remain up through January 26. Mannequins wearing traditional garments float among those wearing the white paper creations, producing a pop of color from an otherwise cool, white background. Hanging sculptures, also designed by Pratt students, add to the three-dimensionality, like exotic plants in an aquarium.

A catalog from the Pucci exhibition is in the works, and some of the student work will also travel to a trade show in Germany. But it’s hard to beat seeing your work in the windows of the world’s largest department store, as Macy’s bills its Herald Square emporium. KC Weakley, an interior-design graduate student from Illinois, created a chain-mail dress for the project and a separate wall mural for the Macy’s windows. He was at the store when the windows were unveiled to the public. “To see people outside looking at our creations—that was just thrilling.”

Out of a fairy tale

Kasia Wisniewski pins a piece of muslin to a dress form, the base for a new dress design. She gives special consideration to movement and structure when designing a garment.

Milwaukee native turns heads with her bridal creations

Kasia Wisniewski designed this gown with shibori pleating. The Milwaukee native who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., works at Vera Wang.

more photos

It starts with sketches.

Soft lines reveal the silhouette, how the material is shaped and how it will move. Then comes the structure: the neckline, the sleeves, the volume, the hem. Finally, there are accessories: a handmade belt, a headpiece or, perhaps, Swarovski crystal details that glint and gleam when caught in the light.

This is how Milwaukee native Kasia Wisniewski creates a gown. After four years at New York City's Pratt Institute, Wisniewski, 22, is a college graduate, an employee at Vera Wang and an award-winning bridal designer. You could almost call her story a fairy tale.

"I think that it was Vionnet who said that, 'When a woman smiles, so should her gown,' " Wisniewski said while visiting her parents in Milwaukee. "The idea that the person wearing the dress being as integral to the look as the garment itself - that's what really guides my work in general.

"In my mind, I've made it because I have a job, which is kind of a rare thing for a lot of people who are graduating in fashion right now. I have a job that I'm really, really excited about and feel I can learn a lot from . . . For me, I'm happy with where I am right now."

Wisniewski's success has continued after graduation. After entering her gown "L'Étoile du Soir," or The Evening Star, into Brides magazine's Operation Dream Dress Competition, she is one of five nationwide finalists. The winner of the competition, which will be revealed this fall, will take home $10,000. On its website, Brides is promising to put the winner on its December cover.

Interest came early

When her mother, Nancy Wisniewski, made dresses for her daughters to wear on holidays, she found young Kasia more and more involved in the designing process.

"Kasia wanted to be very much a part of her dress," Nancy Wisniewski said.

While Kasia's two younger sisters, Kirsten, now 20, and Jana, now 18, hid among the racks of fabric, Kasia helped make executive decisions about her dress.

"She would say, 'I like these sleeves, and I like this hem' or 'I like this neckline,' " Nancy Wisniewski said.

That creative eye would stick with Wisniewski as she grew up. After graduating from Milwaukee's High School of the Arts in 2006, Wisniewski moved to the Big Apple to attend college at the Pratt Institute. Throughout her college years, she landed internships in the fashion houses of Junko Yoshioka, Rebecca Taylor and Zac Posen. With an enviable résumé, Wisniewski appeared well on her way to a happy ending.

But like all fairy tales, there is a journey to take and obstacles to overcome.

For Wisniewski, that would be completing her senior thesis before graduation. Within an academic year, students must sketch their five-piece collection, create a muslin prototype for their pieces and, finally, craft the actual pieces.

Wisniewski's completed collection would be a bridal line titled "Study for the Moon," inspired by Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha. In particular, his collection titled "The Stars," which features graceful women representing the evening star, the morning star, the moon and the North Star, served as her starting point.

"I think the idea of a star is really romantic for brides in a way that's perhaps a little less expected than something like flowers," Wisniewski said of her inspiration.

Each dress features nods to the original drawings like radiating pleats in her "L'Étoile du Matin (The Morning Star)" gown to represent rays of sunlight, but with a look that is distinctly her own. When her designs finally hit the runway, her professors were stunned.

"I really think she had this fantastic vintage feel, but it didn't feel like it came out of a vintage store - it felt very, very modern," said Karin Yngvesdotter, Wisniewski's senior thesis professor. "There was a real flow and a classical beauty in it, and yet, very different, I thought, from what's out there in the bridal market."

Wisniewski's success with her collection didn't surprise her sketching professor, Van Lupu, who said she has a tendency to be fashion forward.

"She always liked to see something that was going to be 'next.' She doesn't want to be a follower," Lupu said.

Wisniewski's professors weren't the only ones impressed by her keen eye.

Judge Deborah Jones-Griffin, head designer at bridal giant Amsale, has been invited to the Pratt Institute as a bridal wear critic for more than five years. She said Wisniewski's talent was unlike anything she had seen before from a student.

"I knew the first day I met Kasia that she was getting the (Pratt school) award," Jones-Griffin said. "Her eye was so sophisticated and so in tune with what is going on in fashion, she had an immediate direction.

"She floored me, absolutely. I was intimidated," she added with a laugh.

Timothy K. "Punk is not dead!"

“I want to create clothes for a good reason. Not for fame or money, but to produce art for art's sake, free from the mechanisms of fashion. I want to design clothes, which the customer recognises as an art form”. This is the calling card of 22-year-old Timothy Kuzmeski. And his works are just a click away…If you try to analyse the creative identity of Timothy K. you'll find three core themes: a New York street punk heart, the original “do it yourself”; a progressive style, but still linked to classic stylistic traits; and the ideals of beauty of Parisian Haute-Couture fashion houses from times past.??Timothy K. is fresh out of university.He completed his B.F.A. in Fashion at the Pratt Institute of Design in New York City in May 2010. Thanks to his collection, he won himself the Renee Hunter evening award. And the first compliments from the press, and above all from the fashion industry, are already being made. Timothy K. Timothy discovered his passion for art at a tender age: in middle school, he won a national architecture prize.Today, he works outside his studio for a number of clients and continues to cultivate his passion for painting and 3D design. If you're in New York, don't be surprised if you see his name around the art galleries. Timothy K. Photos via timothyk.net