IF IT Rains

Winner: Joe’s Blackbook Design scholarship 2020 (menswear)

Farmer Walking Dust Bowl.jpg — concept

This line highlights the beautiful resilience of the human spirit by valorizing the endurance of those who lived through the Dust Bowl. These men and women of the 1930’s settled in the famed fertility of the Middle West only to have the earth dry up underfoot and rise overhead in a wrath; For ten years the dust would blow into storms reaching 2 miles high, many so violent they blocked the sun and stripped paint from houses. Destitution followed. The people endured.

vocabulary

Color Story

The muted palette is inspired by the testimony of a woman who grew up during the Dust Bowl: “When the storms weren’t blowing, everything on earth was brown and the skies were clear and blue… it was really quite beautiful.”

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details

Copy+of+Copy+of+C-63+%281%29.jpg — Mending

Distresses and mends are applied to pieces through the collection, echoing necessity of the time. Inspired by Japanese Kintsugi, repairs are sewn with lustrous silk thread, highlighting faults and emphasizing the mend.

Construction / Fabrics / Trims

The collection adapts and elevates garments of the time: workwear, classic American tailoring, and WWI military garments. Workwear pieces are dignified with tailored construction, and sartorial pieces detailed with workwear trims. All textiles have a natural fiber composition.

Silhouettes

Garments exaggerate the body for elegant proportions: trousers have high waists and heavy pleats to cast a graceful drape over elongated legs, cropped jackets shorten the torso and broaden the shoulders, wide collars and lapels frame the head and neck.