On Tuesday night, April 11, N.C. State designers took their ideas to the runway in the annual Art to Wear fashion show. This is the show’s tenth year in running, and has gained more popularity each year. When the show first started ten years ago, it was just a handful of students wanting to show off their designs. Today, it has expanded into a show with over 3,000 people in attendance.
The designers in the show must be students of either the College of Design or the College of Textiles at N.C. State. Now, in 2011, they have a jury process to select the designers that can be in the show. There were thirteen designers in the show this year.
Many of the designers in this show put a lot of emotion into their work. They were very creative in the way that they made their pieces and put their part of the show together. For example , there was a line that portrayed the five stages of grief. Each model had a black fabric mask over their face, except for one. She was showing the stage of acceptance.
Another designer used pennies as her main focal point in their line. To add to this, she cleverly picked the song “Gold Digger” by Kanye West for the models to walk to. She wanted to show that even the most ‘worthless’ of items could be put into high fashion.
Each line was bold and unique in its own way.
Many high school students hope to study fashion and even one day see their designs on the runway. Jamie Morrisson, a senior here at Leesville, is planning on going to N.C. State to study fashion merchandising. She is going to attend the College of Textiles.
The College of Textiles at State focuses more on the fabric and clothing aspect of fashion, rather than the art and design.
“I really like fashion because its something just not boring. I loved the Art To Wear fashion show on Tuesday night, especially the “5 Stages of Grief” line. It was really depressing, but extremely powerful and definitely a line I remember,” said Morisson.
When asked if she would ever want to be in the show, she replied “Probably not. It sounds like fun, but looks like a lot of work and really competitive. It seems more realistic for me to try and be in the Threads show.”
Another fashion show was recently held at N.C. State. It was called Threads, and mainly focused on the textiles side of fashion. For everyone who enjoyed Art to Wear, this was another great show put on by State’s Colleges of Design.
