At the end of September, the annual Metropolitan Fashion Week took place in LA, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. As every year, the focus of the gala was on fashion and costume design. Entrants’ creations were displayed in front of LA’s impressive City Hall building – a particularly fitting backdrop for this year’s costume contest theme, “World Architecture.”
Among the participants in the competition was Kristin Brady, who showed a design related to the Tower C building in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. Brady was not only inspired by the tower itself, but also by Zaha Hadid, the British-Iraqi architect, designer and artist responsible for designing the towers. Considered one of the most important figures in global architecture of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Hadid typically uses soft lines and shapes in her designs – a visual approach Brady also likes.
Brady studied the works of Zaha Hadid before deciding on the Tower C building as the blueprint for her dress. With the aim of challenging herself, she examined not only the high-rise complex itself, but also the city in which it was built. In the process, she encountered another clue that influenced her vision for the design: city lights.
Think like an architect
Brady divided the dress design process into five parts. Just like an architect selects the materials for a building, she started sourcing fabrics and eventually found the perfect solution for your design vision.
Throughout the design process, Brady pursued the idea of designing a building, not a dress – which took her outside of her comfort zone as a designer. She had to come up with creative solutions and strategically consider how to install the LED lights that would represent the windows of the skyscrapers. The lights could be turned on and off with a device hidden in the dress’s pockets. Combined with the shimmering purple, brown and gold hues of the fabric, the construction represented the appearance of the building during the city’s nighttime hours. The dress’s sweeping lines once again reflected Hadid’s penchant for sinuous shapes, enhanced by the soft texture of the organza -Fabric have been reinforced. “The challenge of thinking like an architect when designing a fashion piece has grown me in so many ways,” Brady said days after the show.
To complete the design in a realistic way, Brady created an entire cityscape for the lower part of the dress as well as a hat design with a rooftop terrace and pool created from her own imagination. The dress was presented by her friend, a model known by the drag name Shanita Blunt.
