Pratt fashion alumni celebrate timeless fashion for a new exhibit.

Pratt, one of the world’s leading design institutes and the oldest in the U.S. ( this year marks its 125th anniversary), kicked off its retrospective “Principles of Design: Pratt Fashion Alumni,” on Fashion’s Night Out (September 8th), exploring future-facing lessons from past and present design talent.

Pratt is home to cutting-edge, cosmopolitan design from the likes of Mabel Julianelli (BFA 1927), Samantha Pleet (BFA 2005), Ariana Bohling (BFA 2005), Laurel Mae DeWitt (BFA 2005) and Siobhan Barrett (BFA 2009), all talents among the 19 on exhibit at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery from now to October 8th.

At the opening night gala, I caught up with Sarah Scaturro, Textile Conservator for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and guest curator for the Pratt exhibit. “There is such incredible design all around us tonight,” says Scaturro. “My main work [for the Cooper-Hewitt] is to preserve clothing and fashion that lasts, so I’m clearly interested in timeless fashion – something strongly reflected here, tonight.”

Included in the show are slow, consciously creating designers like Samantha Pleet, known for her eponymous designs, made locally in New York City from organic and sustainable materials. Creating her own version of the American gamine, Pleet’s designs have been embraced by creatives and exposed through special collaborations with retailers like Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie, where her Shadow Cloak (below) will be sold this fall.

Ariana Bohling is another Pratt alum to watch. Taking a slow approach to fashion, this Oregon native creates leather shoes and accessories through limited capsule collections with artisans in Peru. “Hand-crafted care,” says Bohling, “is given to each piece.”

With the edgy designs of Laurel Mae DeWitt and her label LaureLuxe, sustainability takes a futuristic slant. Creating hand made accessories from recycled metal chains, DeWitt boasts clients like Lady Gaga and 50 cent.

Others, like artist Siobhan Barrett, use fashion as a medium for storytelling. “Siobhan is an especially interesting figure to watch,” says Scaturro. “She’s using clothing to create images,” referring to work like “Slowly Falling Apart,” (below), a photography and video installation featuring a cotton gauze dress being destroyed by its wearer.  While not innately sustainable, her creations make one consider our relationship with what we wear.

As for the future of fashion, Jennifer Minniti, the newly appointed Chair of the Fashion Design program at Pratt says, “We see a convergence between craft and technology. At Pratt we are really utilizing technology and embracing the local [New York City] Garment Center.”

With a hefty project underway by Save the Garment Center, a non-profit dedicated to preserving the local craft, the industry can certainly use the integrous talent of Pratt’s alumni—past, present and future and we look forward to watching their realationship grow.

“Principles of Design: Pratt Fashion Alumni” is on exhibit from September 9th – October 8th at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, (114 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011).

Images: Jennifer Barckley, top image of dress by Pratt Alumni Timothy Kuzmeski

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Maria Moyer goes from being a brand strategist to artist while still following a sustainable map.

What happens when you pick a road and stick to it? You get good at one thing and are ready for another. So goes the life highway of Wink Communication founder Maria Moyer. We’ve been big fans of Moyer for some time having discovered her work through an inspiring New York Times article on the Bureau of Friends back in 2009.

Successfully weaving sustainability and social issues into her work as a brand strategist at Wink, Moyer is now ready to examine the life aquatic with an art exhibit titled Blue, dedicated to the complexities of ocean based on her bi-coastal life in California and New York. The collection will be open to the public September 8th, at ROGAN in New York City and her pieces can be seen indefinitely  at BDDW.

“The collection is really a moment of reflection for me,” says Moyer, who has always lived by the ocean, having grown up in Southern California.

She says on her site that her childhood permitted frequent access to ocean landscapes and creatures, citing even at age 11, “while other kids played with dolls and Lego sets,” Moyer had an opportunity—under the watchful eye of a professor—to dissect a beached 18-foot squid. Years later, while her friends bought Eurail passes for trips abroad, she ventured farther into the Pacific, backpacking through remote areas of the Hawaiian Islands.

Susan Casey, O Magazine Editor-in-Chief and bestselling author of The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean and The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America’s Great White Sharks, says Moyer’s work is a “gorgeous blend of sensitivity and sensibility; she never fails to spot the beauty of the natural world—even if it’s hidden 20,000 leagues beneath the sea. But it’s one thing to identify the sublime essence of, say, zooplankton or roses, and another thing to translate it into exquisite forms. For Maria, the former invariably leads to the latter.  There is no better word I can think of to describe her unique mix of whimsy, sophistication, and science than: delightful.”

While you can currently see some of Moyer’s art at BDDW in New York City, on September 7th, Bowery based fashion label ROGAN will host an invite only “cultural cross-roads of surf, fashion, arts and music in NYC creating a movement inspired by city and ocean.” ROGAN has invited friends to collaborate and create one-of-a-kind pieces and limited edition capsule collections for ROGAN VS. LOOMSTATE-SRF CTY, to be sold exclusively at the ROGAN store. The Blue collection will open to the public on September 8th, with 10% of all sales benefiting Waves for Water.

Julie Gilhart (with Anna Wintour) wearing Moyer’s Circle and Swirl necklace.

We were lucky to catch up with Moyer this week to ask a few questions about her collection and the inspiration behind it.

Here’s what she had to say.

One part of your life deals with helping others to set communication strategy and to develop clear messages (Wink Communication), the other asks you to create and tell the world who YOU are and what’s important to you through your art. Is this a challenge for you, or do they compliment each other?

I’m so glad you asked this question. It’s a good one. The answer: Both. Trying to do both is both a challenge AND these roles compliment each other. I want to be good at both. Making porcelain objects or creating things from wood is a great joy. It’s also intellectually and physically challenging. At the same time, it is somewhat solitary and a little self-absorbing as I persist in getting an idea across, or in my attempt to get a specific result from the material. On the other hand, my consulting practice is highly collaborative and in service to a person or an organization, many of whom are in pursuit of a greater good themselves. My work with Yves Behar, for example. Both compliment each other as they are the social and solitary parts of me. The challenge is time management. Isn’t it always?

“Untitled,” Unglazed stoneware frames (this piece contains 12 frames), sand, feathers, a eucalyptus leaf, a skate egg case, seaweed, and surf wax remnants.

Your Southern California childhood had a direct effect on your appreciation for ocean. Of all aspects of life lived by the ocean, why go for promoting “the tiny plants and animals at the foundation of the Earth’s food chain?”

Have you seen photos of plankton under a microscope? They are gorgeous. I will have a life-time of inspiration from them alone. Many of them come with a silica-based armor (not unlike porcelain) that protects them from predators – a most complex and miraculous architecture. If their beauty doesn’t get your attention, the facts might: Phytoplankton, including algae, sink more carbon than our Earth’s forests and they are also, as you said, a huge part of the world’s food chain. Beauty and power.
To know them is to LOVE them.

Temporary Bliss Bird Vessel (and necklace). Stoneware, unglazed porcelain and (azo, chromium and lead-free) leather cord. Available at BDDW in NYC.

What’s your favorite piece and why?

More than the resulting object itself, the process of making them is what makes something a favorite. It’s tough to choose between them. I’m very excited about a recent group that I call ‘vacuoles.’ They are in the “Blue” collection that I just (today) finished installing at Rogan in NYC. I also love and might not be able to part with an untitled wall installation at Rogan; it’s a bi-coastal archive of beach ephemera; a personal, natural-history journal. A lot of wonderful people in my life were involved in making this work. I had to get friends from all over to contribute sand from ‘my’ beaches. And I love a piece at BDDW that is a bird vessel.

Temporary Bliss Bird Vessel. Stoneware, unglazed porcelain and (azo, chromium and lead-free) leather cord. Available at BDDW in NYC.

Here’s a preview of more art from Blue at ROGAN as well as what you can find at BDDW.

Diatom. Unglazed porcelain. Approximately 6″ diameter.

Porcelain Breast Plate, (azo, chromium and lead free) leather cord.

Box of Hours. Stoneware and porcelain.

Blue Tab Necklace for ROGAN. Porcelain dipped in blue wash, (azo, chromium and lead free) leather cord. Various size and shapes.

Top image by Leslie Williamson

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The London Design Museum’s exhibit “Drawing Fashion,” which runs now through March 6, 2011, is a unique exploration of 20th and 21st century fashion illustrations reminiscent of a time when couture and glamor were far more chummy than today. The exhibit reflects the artistic style of each decade, through Art Nouveau to Art Deco and Pop Art.

Exhibit fashion curator Colin McDowell told Vogue, “Each drawing exemplifies the period it came from which is why illustration is so special. I want this exhibition to kick-start people in thinking ‘Why don’t we use illustration again?’ I collect Vogues and my favorite one is from 1923 – it’s so beautiful because of its drawings,” says McDowell.

These illustrations, hailing from the likes of artists that have worked with Chanel, Dior, Comme Des Garcons and Alexander McQueen bring to light a neglected area in the fashion world that began as an advertising tool pre-photography and only continues now in a handful of design houses. While it seems a dying art, the very much alive exhibit, collected over the past 30 years by Joelle Chariau of Galerie Bartsch & Chariau, is a compilation of artists like turn of the century illustrator Lepape to current artists like Mats Gustafson and Aurore de la Morinerie.

Antonio, New York Times Magazine, 1967

Gustafson, an illustrator who’s advertising campaigns have been utilized by Bergdorff Goodman and Chanel, told the Huffington Post his work has always been about “the shapes he draws attention to” and how working with designers such as Yohji Yamamoto has enabled him to complement his own style with theirs. “You have to somehow fall in love with whatever you work with, to find the most interesting perspective or the beauty in whatever you do. When it really clicks between you and the designers, then of course it is more dynamic and more exciting.”

Mats Gustafson – Red Dress -Yohji Yamamoto, 1999

While illustration expresses fashion in a more exaggerated way, inviting us to interpret clothing through more of a designer’s lens, the artist has the task of being the bridge for us to see how the designers wanted the clothes to really look on a body.

Chariau, with her 30 years experience on the art says: “their work is interesting as fashion drawing, but is also interesting from an art perspective.”

Watch this video interview with collector and co- founder of Galerie Bartsch & Chariau, Joelle Chariau and illustrators Mats Gustafson and Francois Berthoud at the Drawing Fashion media view.

The Design Museum shop will be stocking exclusive exhibition merchandise including limited edition prints, posters and postcards while a book called Drawing Fashion will also be available at the exhibit.

Top Illustration from Antonio-At Home, New York Times Magazine, 1967

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Earth Day humbuggery aside, what are you doing on April 22nd? Here’s a list of treehuggin’ ideas and entertaining events across the country to celebrate our planet while having a blast.

Green Apple Festival

Uniting green advocates from ten cities from coast to coast, the nationally-coordinated Green Apple Festival is the largest Earth Day celebration in the country. While it began as a single event in New York City three years ago, the major metropolises of Boston, Washington DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle will all take part in the action this year and co-host this monumental gala the weekend before Earth Day. Through live entertainment, environmental activities and distinguished guest speakers, this combined effort aims to raise awareness of the green cause and inspire individuals to take an eco-friendly initiative.

Party for the Planet

Pass on eco-friendly practices to your little ones by treating them to a Party for the Planet in celebration of Earth Day. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums sponsors this fun-filled event at over a hundred locations across the country, including Phoenix, Denver, San Francisco, Dallas and Pittsburgh. In addition to learning about wildlife, they’ll enjoy activities that are both fascinating and fulfilling, such as measuring their eco-footprint, building a birdhouse and planting a seed to bring home and nourish. Click here to find one year you.

Disney’s Earth

Following the incredible journeys of a family of polar bears, African elephants and humpback whales, Disney’s Earth opens in theaters on Earth Day. From the creative team responsible for the acclaimed television series Planet Earth, this epic environmental film will touch and dazzle nature lovers of all ages with its remarkable footage and spectacular landscapes. Plus, if you buy a ticket to see this flick on Earth Day a tree will be planted in your name.

Earth Day in Central Park

Think you can’t get anything for free in the Big Apple? Well, get yourself to Earth Day in Central Park. Without spending a cent, you can commemorate this environmental holiday with demonstrations in composting and tree care, mulching and planting projects, recycled material crafts and live entertainment – all thanks to the Central Park Conservancy. Events will be held from noon until 4 pm on Sunday, April 26.

Environmental Film Festival

From April 16-19, Yale University is hosting an Environmental Film Festival in honor of Earth Day. Filmmakers of showcased documentaries and experts on featured topics will be on hand to answer questions and further educate attendees about critical green issues. And, it’s not just for students. Screenings and events are on the house and open to the public.

Earth Day on the National Mall

On Sunday, April 19, the nation’s capital will be abuzz with environmental solidarity in observance of Earth Day with famous figures like Edward Markey, member of the House of Representatives, Majora Carter, founder of Sustainable South Bronx and Denis Hayes, the man behind the very first Earth Day. In addition to these eminent guests, the anticipated Eco-Roadshow will feature exhibits from green companies and non-profit organizations.

Earth Stroll

With the purchase of an $8 eco-passport, Bay Area dwellers and visitors can honor Earth Day on Crissy Field. On Saturday, April 18, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy will host entertainment for the whole family at this popular outdoor spot as a tribute to the environment. Attendees of all ages can learn about native plants, participate in a bicycle rodeo and ride a biodiesel bus, all with live music jamming in the background.

Leap for Green

Kicking off the festivities on Saturday, April 18 with the Early Bird exploration, the Leap for Green Earth Day event outside of Seattle invites locals to get acquainted with the Reptile Man, EarthCorps, Full Circle Farms, renowned artist Marita Dingus and more. Wrap up the green celebration in the heart of nature by taking the Busy Beaver tour of the north wetlands.

Miami Goin’ Green

Featuring unique environmental exhibits like a bike-powered blender and a Nintendo Wii that runs on solar power, the Miami Goin’ Green Earth Day festival is sure to pique your eco interest. Here, you can honor our planet with workshops, seminars, live entertainment and interactive green experiments that will amuse children and adults alike. Ride your bike to Bayfront Park on April 25 and, in addition to complimentary admission, you can have your eco-friendly ride valeted for free.

Earth Day Festival and Flea Market in Clark Park

On Saturday, April 18, the City of Brotherly Love is expressing its devotion to Mother Nature with an entertaining festival in her name to commemorate Earth Day. Join your fellow environmental supporters at Clark Park for complimentary workshops on sustainability, health and gardening, a farmers’ market, green information booths, live music and more.

Earth Fair

With three stages for live entertainment, a long list of eco-friendly exhibitors, an activity area just for children and more, San Diego’s Earth Fair is shaping up to be quite the green gala. On Sunday, April 19 at Balboa Park, locals can learn how to make their living space more sustainable, admire artistic representations of endangered species made from recycled materials and take a peak at the future of more environmentally-conscious automobiles at the cleaner car concourse.

Wilshire Center Earth Day

If you live in Los Angeles or the surrounding area, spend Earth Day on Wilshire Boulevard. Here, you can sample organically-grown local produce at a farmers’ market or enjoy live entertainment from performers like Naked Rhythm and Mystic Journey. Bring your old electronics to have them recycled free of charge and take home a free fruit tree, compliments of the Mayor’s Million Trees Initiative.

Live too far from these major festivals? Click here to search for local celebrations in your area.

Image: mysi anne

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