Fashion Hats: Combining Literary and Pop-culture Aesthetics
1-week Charrette | 3-person Student Teams | Fashion Design
The 2024 industrial design charrette brought students into the world of fashion, an area of interest for many. Assoc. Prof. Sébastien Proulx, Asst. Prof. William Nickley, and Visiting Asst. Prof. Sasha de Koninck had identified a need across all three industrial design cohorts to improve their capacity to work from aesthetic reference.
So, the 2024 charrette paired the task of making a "hat" with a novel aesthetic reference framework. As shown below, the visual framework asked students to gather visual reference from a pop-culture reference (e.g., movie), a work of literary fiction, then combine the two reference groups into a named aesthetic.
Working from their aesthetic reference boards, teams of 3 students made use of recently acquired soft-goods tools and a host of fabrics and natural dyes to envision and construct "hats."
The resulting garments were photographed in a studio setting. Superlatives were awarded for: Most cohesive visual expression, Most innovative experience, Best cultural interpretation, Best fit for character(s), Most creative use of material, Best stitching, Best integration of “hard” material, "How do I even wear it, tho?", Most likely to end up on the red carpet, Most likely to be worn every day, and Best ensemble.
