DANIER'S DESIGN CHALLENGE
Founded in 1972, Canadian brand Danier has offered leather jackets for close to fifty years. In 2009, they teamed up with Ryerson University to hold the first Danier Design Challenge for third year students. I participated in its second iteration and placed third.
VIDEO
Made it to the top three!
The top ten contestants were asked to create a one minute video midway through the semester, leaving literally one and a half months to construct the final garments in addition to planning, shooting, and editing video footage. There were no requirements other than the video's length, so I decided to create a conceptual video for entertainment purposes opposed to one with more commercial value. The video concept was inspired by an Alexander Wang's F/W 2010 campaign and Helmut Lang's photography (see pages from my workbook above). By projecting Super 8 film footage into a gallery space with the model, my team was able to create a layered and high contrast video set to Next Girl by The Black Keys.
CONCEPT
The jacket concept was inspired by two things; Montreal designer Denis Gagnon's use of zippers to create sculptural masterpieces and the trend of combining a 'self' and 'contrast' fabric made of different fibre content that is in the same shade. By using similar tones I was able to create a larger contrast between the fabrics and zippers, making the garment POP.
DEVELOPMENT
The most challenging aspect of my design was sewing knit, zipper tape, and leather together because each fabric acts differently. The second most challenging aspect was drafting the pattern and envisioning the order of operations for constructing the jacket. By wrapping the zippers around the shoulder, I could not use conventional construction methods (like constructing the sleeve, then the bodice, and then sewing the two together). For example to construct part of the back, the bottom sleeve and center back bodice were combined, followed by the upper sleeve and shoulder pieces, before being sewn together. A similar method was used to connect the zippered pieces wrapping the hips as well.
PRODUCT
Check out this seaming!
The knit panels were topstitched down to keep the focus on the use of zippers. A fine and dense double knit was used to reduce any potential pilling that could occur as a result of the zipper teeth rubbing against it during use. By choosing a denser knit which acted similar to the lambskin (compared to more lightweight knit), I was able to control the materials easily during production. Instead of working with three materials, it felt like I was working with two.
AWARDS & PRESS
Top left: Danier's CEO Jeffrey Wortsman with the four jacket designs. Top right: The finalists (Meghan Erin, Robyn Gemzik, Andrea Dineen, and Jessica Tep). Bottom left: Jeffrey Wortsman with the top ten jacket designs. Bottom right: Various blogs like Hit Parade featured the finalists' jackets and Jeanne Beker of Fashion TV stardom tweeted about the competition as well!