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.

Mid-Century Modern Delights

It was time for a thoroughly modern morning in Palm Springs as Modernism Week continued under picture perfect blue desert skies. No stuffy lectures here, as participants gathered outside to join a bike tour through a couple of the swankiest neighborhoods in town.

Hot Purple Energy, a solar energy company headed up by a couple of rock and roll hipster-type guys, set up the free bike tour. Nate and David are seen a lot around town with their mobile solar "trash can" bringing free power to events. 

There's no question these guys are in business to make a buck, but they tend to give a lot away too. When I asked how much the t-shirts were stacked in a pile at the registration table, I got a smirk in response. As if! "They're free," said Nate, one of the co-owners. "It's not all about money." Alrighty then, point taken!

So off we went, some of us in our free t-shirts, led by Nate and David, peddling through the quiet back streets in the areas of Smoketree Village, Murray Canyon Drive, Canyon Estates, Twin Palms, and Sagebrush. 

The neighborhoods are filled with delightful examples of mid century modern designs showcasing elegantly simple architecture with low pitched and arched roofs, floor to ceiling glass windows, many brightly colored doors adding a splash of color to the exterior clean lines and earth tones, and perfectly sculptured lawns and trees with every potted plant a statement in itself. 

I also saw one particular home with drought friendly landscaping of colored rocks forming mosaic like designs. Clever and beautiful! 

              

I was bringing up the rear, so I missed out on any of Nate or David's knowledge of the area, but I'm pretty sure we saw a Richard Neutra house, and probably a couple Donald Wexler's.                                                                                               About halfway through the ride, we got off our bikes for an exterior tour of a fabulous example of a renovated home evoking true mid century modern design.                                                                                                                                             Aside from the de rigeur clean architectural lines, the home is exquisitely decorated with every single item a piece that adds to the modern motif.                      

The only thing missing were martinis and Frank Sinatra.                                                                     

Adding to the chic charm of the modest compound, was one of the cutest casitas I've ever seen.  

The bike tour was a great way to tour the neighborhoods, and really feel the essence of the design. Of course, now I'm going to have to go back in my car - to get all the photos I didn't stop to take for fear of losing the group. There's something to be said for being at the head of the pack. 

Celebrating Joyful Sculptures

Artist Gesso Cocteau is a vision herself, before even getting to her art. I first met her a few years ago when I was producing a story for a CBS affiliate. 

We had a lovely afternoon strolling her garden filled with her sculptures, and then later watching her work in her studio. Her work is curiously compelling, and evokes the emotional intensity of the human spirit in a minimalist, pure form. 

For the past 20 years she’s been working primarily with bronze. Joy, jubilation, love, desire, grief and despair are all present in her work.

An Indian Wells resident, she’s has been showing in galleries since the late seventies, with her work evolving from drawings in pen and ink, to painting, to fabricated steel sculptures. In 1990 she began focusing on casting in bronze, evolving toward a celebration of the human form. 

“I want my sculptures to be a language that becomes the tangible expression of thought, to reflect my own life’s journey,” says Cocteau. “The truth that lives in the posture of the body is what becomes evident, a truth that reflects the condition of the human spirit.”

Her monumental works include a 51-ft. cast bronze, Endless Celebration, the tallest standing cast bronze sculpture in America, installed in Bellevue, Washington, and a 20 ft. cast bronze Dragon commissioned by Don Brownstein and installed in Los Angeles, California. 

Some of her many commissions, aside from major private collectors, include Hard Rock Cafes in Rome, Berlin, Niagara Falls, Boston, Cleveland,  and Orlando. When I was in Rome this past year, it was cool to see her work in the Café windows.  

Her show, “20 Years of Bronze,” is currently at Classic Art Gallery, 73-399 El Paseo in Palm Desert. 

Check out her website at www.gessococteau.com.

Whimsical Pet Paintings Raise Funds for Animal Shelter

Palm Springs Artist Shawn Savage is a busy guy. He has his hands in lot of projects, including a new series of Pet Paintings which he originally launched last October to support the Palm Springs Animal Shelter.

"Summer is the time of self reinvention for me and the 'Savage' brand," he says, "and I am very excited about the momentum that we are creating going into the new season." 

The new paintings are true to the whimsical Savage style, but are distinctly different from last year's bold color paintings.

Drawn on recycled paper, such as old Thomas Guide map pages, they reflect a looser style, but convey as much punch and fun as the color designs. They're also framed and ready to go. 

Some of the paintings from last year's series can still be found hanging at the PS Animal Shelter. They're available for sale with a portion of the proceeds going to the Shelter. 

Savage says he's creating an entire line of products for the new drawings so if you can't afford an original painting or drawing, you can still get yourself a little pet whimsy on greetings cards, pet ware or t-shirts. The new series and design line are expected to be available later this month, and last I heard, Shawn is planning a showing at the Blu Print Green Gallery in Palm Springs. The date is not yet confirmed, so keep your eyes and ears open for that. A portion of the proceeds from the new series will also be donated to the PS Animal Shelter. 

But that's not all Savage is working on. This summer he's also teaming up with local craftsmen and launching a new furniture line that will include Sculpture Fountains. 

"The first pieces from my line will be two crendenzas, coffee and end tables and wall sculptures inspired by mid-century styling and Palm Springs architecture." 

Launch party for the furniture line is expected in late August or early September. 

Of course, if you're not in the Palm Springs area, you can always go online to check out the latest from Shawn Savage's many projects and designs.  

http://www.thesavagegallery.com/

http://www.sculpturefountains.com/