Designers on the Art of Fashion

Fashion Week El Paseo brings together an eclectic mix of designers showcasing creative work, some of it taking your breathe away the same way a Picasso or Caravaggio can stop you in your tracks. When designs are that ravishing, it's hard to imagine wearing them! At one of the popular events during Fashion Week, a trunk show with Project Runway designers, I caught up with the designers to get their thoughts on the art of fashion and inspiration.  

Designer Irina Shabayeva

Irina Shabayeva: "I started as an artist. I went to school to be a painter and then I slowly fell into the fashion design department because I loved clothing and that's what I do. I love artful fashion and putting craftsmanship into it. I love couture because people put hours and hours into every stitch and detail. It's like a painting. Making a dress is like creating a painting, creating a story, and every dress is its own little world, its own little fantasy. That's exactly what I do. It's a lot of work and a lot of hours, but I think it makes it worthwhile and I think people really appreciate it."

"I love texture and I also love organic materials. The feather thing just kind of happened. I started playing around with them and putting them on fabric and seeing how they worked and how the light worked with the feathers. I found it amazing what you could create with the feathers, and the colors. It's bringing something new to the evening wear world, keeping with the elegant and classic but making it modern and today and giving it that little bit of sass and sexiness.

Irina Shabayeva's butterfly dress

Detail of Shabayeva's butterfly dress

The butterfly dress is a print I designed and it's one of our most successful prints. We have these butterfly wings appliqued on to the print with feathers. It's basically like a butterfly in flight. It flutters!"

Viktor Luna: "Art is very important in a designer's work because we all feel something, so when you look at my clothing, it's art, you're feeling something. 

Designer Viktor Luna

I incorporate a lot of elements in my new collection, which I call "Artisanal" because it's all hand done. I've done prints where I create my own canvas and my own images.

For my red dress, I painted the red onto the white fabric. It's hand done so they're all different. Just like any original painting, they're all different. I think fashion or clothing should be a work of art. When you wear it, it needs to have that special piece or touch, so I do something that's hand done or hand painted. Then I embellish it with rope or something - like the red dress - to create that hand made quality."

Yellow plastic details on the shoulders of
Luna's blue dress

"The blue dress fabric is from a photograph from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's called the peacock chair. It's an actual chair. I printed it into the fabric and made it more abstract versus making it very obvious that it's a chair."

"I don't necessarily call myself a fashion designer because a fashion designer is someone who thinks forward and creates trends. I'm a designer. I design. I think a fashion designer is someone who is a trend setter, like Karl Lagerfeld. Putting the yellow plastic pieces on the blue dress shoulders is kind of like my trend setting - putting plastic in the design - creating something new and fresh that nobody has seen. It's one of those things to intrigue people and captivate people  - like a work of art."

Helen Castillo:  "For me, creating is something you can't turn off and when you know, you know. That's what being an artist is. Fashion is an art."

Designer Helen Castillo

"You're taking your vision and creating something, making something with your hands. I have a small studio apartment, my kitchen is my work room. I've got my industrial machines and my work forms and that's my family. It's instinctive to work non stop. I have to keep myself surrounded by my girls, my mannequins. There's always fabric everywhere and I'm non-stop."

Michael Costello - "I grew up with fashion and drawing on the walls and my mom and dad never got mad at me for doing that. They would cut the wall and frame it!"

Designer Michael Costello

"So it was really cool. My whole family has been very supportive of my passion for fashion. You have to be passionate about what you do."

Michael Costello's red orange cocktail dress

"If you wake up in the morning and you don't want to go to work then you're obviously doing the wrong thing. There's not one day that I wake up and don't say 'I can't wait to get to the studio.' It's every single day for me. No matter what happens that day. Even if it's a customer and the dress doesn't fit and she's bitchy, I still love that too. This is the profession I've always wanted to do."

Sequinned waistline in Michael Costello gown design

Ari for Andy South:  "Art and fabrics, you know, it's about emotion. It's feeling that's physical, but also a textile that can move you emotionally is one that's a no brainer for an artist to pick up as our medium.
It's the feel, the lifestyle."

Designer Ari for Andy South

"I design for both the New York woman and the Hawaiian woman, both very different women, but it's about the vibe, the lifestyle that each woman carries respectively. What i get from Hawaii is a really relaxed feeling which I think is a really good place for any woman to be everyday - that relaxed state of mind.
That's where a lot of things - like soft fabrics - come into my line, the flow, the easy care, the comfort, the feel."

Uli Herzner:  "Inspiration for me comes from every day life. Sometimes the tiniest little thing can give me so much inspiration and so many ideas."

Designer Uli Herzner custom fits a customer

"If I see other collections, I get inspired by their ideas and it starts rolling for me. Sometimes I'll start with a certain dress in the morning and it becomes design diarrhea! Ideas just come out of me. Five hours later my whole house is full of fabrics, feathers, beads."

Mini skirt by Uli Herzner

"So it's like I started here and I go somewhere else. As kids we're always making stuff and building stuff and I think it's just in you. Designers have this thing where they can't stop creating things and I think we will never stop creating things. There's just a lot inside. If you don't have it, you cannot learn it. It's something in you."

Jewelry designed by Uli Herzner

Fashion Week El Paseo continues through Saturday. The full schedule is at FashionWeekElPaseo.com.

Designer contact information:
IrinaShabayeva.com
ViktorLuna.com
DesignerHelen.com
MichaelCostelloCouture.com
AndySouth.com
Uli Herzner's website is currently under construction. She can be found on facebook.

The #1 Thing You Must Have to Get on Project Runway

Fashion Week El Paseo in Palm Desert is well underway and one of the most highly anticipated evenings is the show featuring Project Runway designers. Palm Springs homeboy Michael Costello is always a favorite and joining him this year is Uli Herzner, Viktor Luna, Ari for Andy South, Irina Shabayeva and Helen Castillo.

(l to r) Ari for Andy South, Michael Costello, Helen Castillo

At a panel discussion earlier in the day of their runway show, the designers talked about their experiences on the show and how it's impacted their careers. They all agreed getting selected for Project Runway was a huge accomplishment in itself. What's the secret ingredient needed to outshine thousands of others in the audition process?

According to Executive Producer Rob Bagshaw, talent is key but talent alone will not get you on the show. Bagshaw says the most important ingredient is passion.

(l to r) Rob Bagshaw, Uli Herzner, Michael Costello

"They don't have to be the most talented, the most experienced or even the most confident, but they do have to know what they love, know their passion. They have to have some sort of technical proficiency, of course, to physically make it through the production, but being passionate, being focused on the type of designer they are, is very inspiring for us. That's the number one for us."

Bagshaw says the designers also need to be confident in their design aesthetic, because that's what translates on television. "We're looking for talent that can make it in our television world," he explains. "And personality, because it is a tv show, and there's the entertainment factor."

(l to r) Helen Castillo, Viktor Luna, Irina Shabayeva

Project Runway is not a fashion school, Bagshaw points out. It is a television show. But it's also sincere about helping designers break into the business, and Project Runway All Stars is about helping them build their brand.

"Once you're in the Project Runway family, you're always in the Project Runway family," he says. "As producers we are fiercely proud of the work they've done on the show, but really, what they've gone on to achieve in the industry afterwards."

Bagshaw also revealed there's another Project Runway spin-off in the works, which will be announced soon. Although he said he couldn't say what specifically, when I asked if it might be a Project Runway for kids, he smiled and said, "That's a very good idea."

(l to r) Susan Stein, Uli Herzner, Ari for Andy South 

The panel discussion was moderated by Susan Stein, fashion editor of Palm Springs Life Magazine and co-producer of Fashion Week El Paseo.