One Last Hissy Fit with Fashion Designer Lisa Rigney

May 4th, 2010 Posted by Dara Katz in Friends, Inspiration, Interview

Dinner with one person dead or alive? Obviously, Tim Gunn.

Who’s Tim Gunn? He’s a fashion sage/life mentor to all who take his always-dead-on advice. Oh, and he co-hosts my favorite reality TV show, Project Runway. In each episode, Gunn checks in on the competing designers during challenges and says things like “this worries me” or “make it work!”

Beside the fact that I’d sit down with Tim Gunn and ask him questions that have absolutely nothing to do with fashion—Do you like Diet Coke? What do you think of this health care stuff? Can we do this again?—he’s really opened my eyes to fashion design and all of its facets: concept, textiles, tailoring and styling.

So, I was more than excited when Chicago’s Art Institute fashion student, Lisa Rigney, invited me to see her at work.

Lisa Rigney is a third year, which means the project for the May 7th fashion show is three looks. For those of you who aren’t familiar with fashion design and construction, that’s a lot of look to make, and yet, Rigney seemed very calm and composed. Her coolness (which I’d like to point out means both her calm affect and fierce swagger evident in her neat-o shirt she spruced up with some found fabric) might have something to do with the fact that she knows what she wants to create and is open to evolve.

Rigney says fashion is her little world that she can control. It’s not just about becoming a seamstress; it’s about making art. Part of her art is inspired by the Slow Fashion Movement. Think of Slow Fashion as the opposite to stores like Forever 21. Slow Fashion garbs are made with all materials organic, recycled or fair trade and produced for the long-term.

Slow Fashion means more time thinking about each piece of the puzzle. And you can see these ideals in Rigney’s own process when you notice how the wheels have been turning in her head for quite some time.

For example, she takes the notion of her father’s structured UPS uniform, an iconic costume she’s grown up with day after day, and deconstructs it to conceptual fashion.

The overall theme for her three looks is “One last hissy fit before I grow up.”

If I were to chime in Tim Gunn-style here I’d say that for a hissy fit, the work is beautiful, innovative and most definitely, art.

Here’s what Lisa has to say about her craft:

Q: When people think of fashion design, many things come to mind, from elite runway shows to mass production in some far off place. What does fashion design mean to you? And why are you pursuing it?

A: I think fashion has an amazing ability to keep an individual actively engaged in life. What a person chooses to wear is always a reflection of their immediate surroundings: the weather, the society, the time. The repetition of getting dressed can seem mundane, but it is sometimes the first active decision we make in a day. In return, I believe a fashion designer always has to be actively engaged in his or her immediate environment, to either cater to it or break it.

Q: As an emerging fashion designer, what do you want to bring to the world of fashion? What do you want to change about it?

A: We have witnessed tremendous advances in communication technology. The world has never been so small, and the ability to comprehend the amount of people on our planet has never been so large. Networks of people are no longer determined by physical location. Instead, we have the ability to form networks based solely on similar interests. I think this factor has started to fragment the fashion industry a bit, allowing those interested in fashion outside of New York, Paris, and Milan to experience what is happening on the runway via live video streaming, blogs, and twitter almost as soon as those sitting at the shows. My hope is that the fashion industry will continue to be fragmented and niche markets will start thriving.

I think that designers have such an amazing opportunity to slow down the fashion cycle and make clothing consumption more sustainable. I’m not talking about sacrificing good design and replacing it with tree-hugging hemp wear, but taking on a design challenge that involves the whole system, from sketch to material to manufacture to marketing to disposal that provides consumers with a product that is guilt free and of high quality.

Q: Tell me about the SAIC spring fashion show. What is the importance of the show and what will you be presenting and why?

A: The SAIC fashion show is going to be really exciting this year. It’s going to be held in the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute Museum. It’s just an honor to be able to show our work in such a beautiful space that houses some of the best modern art in the world. Students in the fashion department core program focus their entire second semester on preparing garments for the show. The show gives us all an opportunity as students to experience a professional runway show, and it is treated very seriously among students and faculty. We really try to focus on using the body as an active armature for visual and artistic expression, challenging the way we perceive the body and how we interact with the world we live in.

Q: Why is Chicago a good city to study fashion? Are you ever inspired by the city?

A: Chicago is a great city in which to study fashion because it is culturally rich in a lot of ways, but there isn’t the same pressure and competition that a city like New York might present to a student of fashion. I have personally found that without the pressure of trying to fit my designs in an existing market, I’ve been able to solely focus on finding my own unique path as a fashion designer. I think it’s a wonderful way to reach your potential as a great designer: to experiment and find a personal visual vocabulary first, and then figure out how to market your designs later.

Q: How have the last few years changed fashion design at the student level in terms of technology? What’s now possible? New computer programs? Machines? How computer savvy can a fashion designer get these days? Educate us.

A: It really feels like a lot of students are turning to programs like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to create fashion illustrations or at least to prepare their designs for a portfolio presentation. SAIC requires all students to have a Mac laptop, and each of us is equipped with the Adobe Creative Suite, so I think that is proof it’s becoming more and more important as a designer or an artist to be able to use these programs.

I personally do all of my design illustrations on the computer simply because I found a method that simulates the way I like to create. I start by experimenting with materials and shapes on the dress form, and then I scan or take pictures of these elements and collage them on a figure in Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

We have access to other advanced equipment like laser cutters that can cut materials based on computer design files, a heat press that can fuse materials together, and a computer embroidery machine. Overall I think it’s really important or at least beneficial for a designer to be computer savvy. In my experience, almost everyone who is interested in seeing my work would prefer to see a website, a disc, or a pdf rather than a material portfolio, and having the ability to use programs myself to enhance the presentation of my work has been really beneficial.

Q: How in your eyes will technology change the way you and other fashion designers just coming up in the industry produce designs and get noticed?

A: I really think fashion designers will continue investigating video to showcase their designs as opposed to photography. There are a lot of designers collaborating with video artists now, and I think it’s really exciting. Blogs are really huge in terms of exposure. I myself have 5 or so blogs I look at everyday to see what’s new in terms of design, and there is really no other medium that can spread information so quickly. I think blogs are reaching a level of sophistication in terms of content and aesthetic that is comparable to high end magazines, and I think they are going to keep going in that direction.

Q: What didn’t we ask? What are your predictions for fashion design in the next 10 years?

A: Part of me thinks that crazed closet Project Runway fans and sons and daughters of Home Ec teachers will start a DIY movement for fashion design similar to the knitting craze that budded a few years ago. Posting print friendly patterns on the Internet and demo videos for how to construct it. I think a DIY fashion movement could be really cool, maybe there already is one that I don’t know about. It seems like those within the fashion industry try to maintain an elitism that intimidates the public, making fashion design inaccessible, but I think the more that the mystique of the industry becomes exposed on the Internet, people will start seeing it as more accessible. It’s amazing what the Internet has enabled in the past few years in terms of offering professional creative tools to the common public. With the ability to download free software that is almost as good as the professional versions and instructional videos on YouTube. I think that would be awesome if people started posting patterns of a clothing design they created. It could be a really effective alternative to buying interesting fashion on a small budget, and would actually be a sustainable manufacturing solution. Most fashion magazines like Harpaar’s and Vogue used to provide patterns of the latest fashion in the early 20th century, using the Internet could be a modern take on it.

And, of course, I had to…

Q: Would you ever audition for Project Runway?

A: Probably not. I think the show is entertaining, but the designers on the show are put into such a vulnerable state. The contestants work hard for their rewards, but I think they must miss a more natural process of achieving success, where things are learned over time through experience, not condensed into a short amount of time in high stress situations. It just seems like a shortcut to me.

The 2010 SAIC student fashion show is this Friday May 7th.

Lisa’s Chicago Slow Fashion recommendation:

Frei Designs http://www.freidesigns.com/