AM Design Associates: CRE8 2012

Being in the design industry, we are continually invited to participate in wonderful activities and causes. Earlier this year we were asked to be involved with CRE8 2012. This year's event helped to support Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), a wonderful organization that reaches out to children who are removed from their homes either due to neglect or abuse. Every year CRE8 challenges it's separate teams of designers to produce a garment made from materials used in the design industry (ie tiles, wallcovering, upholstery, etc.) while adhering to a particular "theme". This year's theme was Fairy Tales. In order to round out our team, we were paired up with some wonderful ladies at Rogers Ford Architects. As interior designers, we were definitely up for this challenge. The following is a breakdown of the process we went through to be one of the winning teams for CRE8 2012:

Step 1: Book Drive

Each design team was given the initiative to raise as many books as it could, which would in turn be donated, to the children of CASA. The team with the most books was able to select their fairy tale first. Amazingly, our team raised over 500 books! Out of 22 design teams, we were third overall in gathering the most books. Our team had decided previously that if given the opportunity we would choose The Little Mermaid, so we did! We were then paired up with our underwriters (the reps that would be supplying the materials) Horizon Tile and Koroseal. After many sketches and searching through tiles and wallcoverings, we all agreed upon the concept, inspired from the character of Ursula the sea witch, and the materials we wanted for our garment and placed our order.

Step 2: Development

Our team met several times to develop our design and decide how our model would appear. Eight days prior to the fashion show we were given our materials to begin our creation. This process was more time consuming than we each had previously anticipated. One of our team members happened to be quite talented with a sewing machine. She was able to form the base and the bodice for the dress. We glued tiles, cut wallcovering and fabric and developed a headpiece for the look. As we were constructing the piece, our design continued to morph and change as we discovered what did and did not work. We worked feverishly around the clock right down to the day of the show.

Step 3: Bring it all Together

Friday, prior to the show that same night, we all met to assemble our garment on the model. Our model had to wear the top portion of the dress from 3 pm until after the show around 10 pm because there was no way to get the top of the garment over her headpiece. The top portion consisted of a wallcovering bodice and a mesh underlayment around her chest, shoulders and neck. Sewn over the chest was a "shell-like" piece made out of the same black wallcovering as the bodice. We used green and orange tiles glued on the mesh to give a jeweled scale like appearance. After the top was placed on the model, we attached her headpiece. The headpiece was inspired by the fins on a fish. The headpiece alone took about 12 hours to create and consisted of hundreds of beads and jewels each meticulously glued on. We then styled the hair by curling and teasing, in turn creating a large amount of volume. Our model was then called to rehearsals and we all reconvened afterwards to finish the make-up. Thank goodness we had a make-up artist because it turned out fabulous! After makeup was completed, the model carefully slipped on the skirt portion of the ensemble. The skirt form was much like a pencil skirt, but over the base material, we glued scale-like shapes that wrapped around the entire skirt. We used the same mesh material from the top portion of the garment for a fin-tail inspired train on the back of the skirt.

Step 4: The Walk

The time finally arrived for the big event. One by one each fairy tale inspiration walked, or should I say strutted, down the runway. The garments were so creative and just amazing! Everyone did such a fantastic job which I'm sure made it all the more difficult to select the winners. The results were announced, and all of our team members were surprised when the judges announced The Little Mermaid as 'Best Performance'. This made all of the hard work and time well worth it. After taking many photos we enjoyed the night with food, drinks, dancing and fun.