I visited the Cloth, Construct, Culture exhibit at the Parallax Center in Portland recently. The curator of the exhibit, Rhonda P. Hill, lives in Portland and has written extensively about each artist. I’ve included links to her posts for each of the designers below whose work caught my eye. All photos are by me, 2023.

Kyle Denman

Kyle Denman’s “mul·ti·po·lar⁠—ex·ist·ence” collection uses rigilene to achieve the rolling wave forms in his pieces. The Project Runway winner uses another method that I first saw in the Guo Pei exhibit in San Francisco. He layers fabric vertically with a shape in profile. Here’s a closeup of the sleeve from the black dress above.

Korina Emmerich

Korina Emmerich (Puyallup Tribe) explores the different meanings and history behind the blankets and surface patterns most often associated with the Pendleton brand. The all-encompassing ensemble includes a hat, purse, and coat. The coat and the purse are pattern matched. Emmerich’s work has been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Yun Qu

Yun Qu, who designs for the brand Videmus Omni, combined fabric deadstock with inspiration from Debussy, Hokusai, and Renoir to create the Claire De Lune collection. In one of the pieces (pictured below) the designer takes a heavy motorcycle jacket silhouette and turns it into something light and full of motion. The workmanship is a delight. The seams are so beautiful!

Isabella Diorio

Isabelle Diorio designed the Female Engagement Team Collection around specific named women veterans. For example, the Brewster Bolero pictured below was named after:

Rear Admiral Grace Brewster Murray Hopper served in World War II, Korean War, and the Vietnam War. A destroyer was named after her, USS Hopper, DDG-70, as was the Cray XE6 “Hopper” supercomputer. As founder of the COBOL programming language, a precursor to many of the software code approaches of today, her work is legendary among computer scientists and mathematicians.

A Fashion Story Honors Women in Combat | EDGE Talks to Isabella Diorio, by Rhonda P. Hill

Diorio uses renewable resources to make the collection. I love the mix of textures of the burlap, vegan leather, dog tag, heavy zipper, and woven material. The roundness of the buttons repeat at the sleeve and shoulder burlap rectangles give a route for the eye to travel up and down. The quality of workmanship is also quite lovely especially considering how difficult some of the materials are to work with.

Summary

I am so inspired by the designers and works in this show. My main takeaways are:

• Give some thought to the ability to use the fashion that I design to convey concepts.
• Explore the creative reuse of materials within the context of the concept.
• Focus on the quality of workmanship. It always shines through.