lunar gala, persona 8" x 8" books, collection of 9 outfits
Lunar Gala is an annual fashion show at Carnegie Mellon that showcases student and professional fashion design. I collaborated with one other student to design a nine piece collection for the 2007 show. We were among 13 student designers selected.
We treated each outfit as a character with a specific persona, rather than as apparel. Eight of the outfits are presented in pairs to refering back to the theme vice versa. The nineth outfit subverts the idea of clothing, making it more of an object than clothing. On stage, the models’ interaction with others exude each characters' persona even further.
Persona, a collection of nine outfits for men and women.
Left, book with fashion illustrations. Right, book with photographs from the show. Courtesy of Ken Lau Photography.
Close up of three signature handbinding. Courtesy of Steve Hanna Photography.
We designed and submitted a 48 page handbound book as our portfolio describing our approach to the theme and presenting our collection, Persona. The portfolio is 8" by 8", printed on Arches Textwove with ragged torn edges, and handbound. Fashion illustrations describe the overall look, construction, and materials of each outfit, and expressive illustrations describe the attitudes of each character.
After the show, we collected photographs to create a second portfolio book to document the final products and the show. The overall look of the first and second portfolios are intended to be appear as inversions of each other.
Collection finale.
"Architecture fourth-years Angela Chi and Waz Wu designed Persona, featuring both the modern and the classic."
- The Carnegie Pulse.