Courtesy of Fashion Anarchy
From left: Barbara Bultman, Amanda Casarez, Courtney Tharpe, and Dwight Carter
Fashion Anarchy, Dwight Carter's four-part design competition in which designers have 48 hours to create looks and present them to be judged, has been underway since its first event in May. For the last three shows, designers have created looks telling the story of the Washington Avenue Garment District's past, present, and future. Now, the winners of the first three installments will compete at the Fashion Anarchy finale, this Saturday at The Last Hotel (1501 Washington).
For the next three days, the designers, each paired to work with an aspiring student designer from the Saint Louis Fashion Fund, will swiftly work on their designs, staying at the boutique hotel. Before they get started on their looks (each inspired by a different aspect of The Last Hotel), the three competitors spoke with SLM about their style, inspiration, and how they’re preparing for the end of Fashion Anarchy.
Courtney Tharpe, designer and owner of Tharpe
How would you describe your brand? “Eclectic attire for the whimsical tomboy in all of us. I don’t know any other way but to design for what I want to wear. So that’s kind of been the driving force in my design process all along. I just think, ‘What do I want to wear?’ And make that happen. At my core, I am a pretty eclectic tomboy with a hint whimsy and an edge of modernity. I really like to focus on contrast, opposing ideas, and play with fabric patterns, textures a lot. I’m really inspired by the fabrications I use and really like to play with the fabric on the mannequin to see what the fabric wants to do.”
Photography by Joan Fisher
How does that play into your process? “I guess other designers can do this where they design a sketch and stay true to the sketch and make that happen. But for me, it’s much more collaborative with the fabric and with the materials. It’s a more tactile experience. I have to have them in hand and see how they drape, how they want to move. I kind of feel like fabrics knows what they want to do… It’s this process of figuring out how the puzzle goes together for me.”
What fabrics and materials do you find yourself drawn to? “There are certain fabrics that pop out to me where I can see it and know ‘Oh, I’m going to make that into a pant.’ Or, ‘That’s going to make a really fantastic dress.’ I know when I see the fabric exactly what I want it to, I’m just not exactly sure what it looks like... [For the first Fashion Anarchy competition,] I found this great ombré wool. The second I saw it I knew it was going to be a coat, so I knew I was going to do a coat for the competition.”
What do you want people to take away from your clothing? “I'm more of a maximalist than a minimalist. I have a hard time stopping at just like a really clean, what people would maybe say is a sleek look. I just like to have fun and add some elements. I really want people to have fun with fashion and my clothes and to experiment with their style. Push their boundaries and push their confidence levels. What I find most frustrating about fashion is when I hear other women, saying to me or to each other, 'Oh, my god, that looks amazing on you, I could never pull that off.' And you hear the phrase 'I could never pull that off,' and it's like, you can! If you like something, there's a way that you can make it work and make yourself feel confident in it.”
Amanda Casarez, who is currently a student of Washington University’s master's program in visual arts
How did you get into fashion? “I was taught by my mother. High school is when it really started developing. I would make my own prom dresses.”
How would you describe your style? “Tomboy chic with a little bit of grunge. I like things to be very structural and polish, but I like that coolness to it. I want you to be able to wear my clothes and not feel like you’re restricted to go to specific places with it. I want you to be able to wear my clothes to the grocery store. I want you to be able to wear my clothes at night if you’re going somewhere—being able to dress it up and dress it down.”
Where do you find inspiration? “A lot of my inspiration either comes from art or it comes from music, personal experiences, or things that I’ve come across. The last few collections I feel like have been very personal. I like to say that I wear my feelings. I don’t talk about them, but I do wear them. So you can see, throughout my collection, they’re not necessarily struggles that I’m going through, but just where my mindset is at. Sometimes it’s really dark, sometimes it’s really bright. Right now, because I am in an art program at Wash. U., a lot of what’s going through my mind is art theory and a lot of different artists I’m coming across and things that I find that resonate with me and my aesthetic.”
What is it like to create your piece in such a short amount of time? “I work very well under pressure. This was my strategy last time: I have a timeline for what needs to be completed every night. So as long as I knew I was meeting that timeline, I was fine. Planning on how you're going to do things and then kind of visualizing how you're going to cut this and how you're going to sew it before you start doing it is very important. Because there are times when you start clipping and then you mess something up, it can ruin it. It actually happen with one of my pieces in the event when I won. When I did the pant pattern, I didn't put a side seam on them. Little mistakes like that tend to happen just because you're in such a hurry, and there's the lack of sleep, so you don’t think things through.”
Barbara Bultman, a graduate of Lindenwood University and proprietor of Barbara Bultman Designs
How would you describe your designs? “They’re edgy, but kind of boho chic, so they kind of have a ’70s bohemian feel, but also a modern edge, too.”
Courtesy of Barbara Bultman
Where do you find inspiration? “I look at what’s going on in the world, because I feel as a whole, it affects everything. It affects fashion, what you see on TV shows, a little bit of everything. That’s how the world is changing—evolving through what’s going on.’
What was it like when you first competed? “I was really excited. I'm really good at working under pressure a lot of times. My friends always joke with me: ‘You procrastinate so much.’ But my best ideas come last minute. So it's like—boom—it just hits you. For me, doing something in a 48-hours time frame is kind of perfect because that's the way I work a lot of times anyways.”
What fabrics have you selected for your design? “I do a lot of work with leatherwork and full animal prints and bright colors. There’s this one color I really gravitated toward. It's almost a burnt orange. I feel like I've used that before in previous collections. It's always my favorite color that I've been using, so when I saw it I was like, ‘This is perfect, just have to find something that goes with it and fits into my inspiration.’”
How are you preparing your assignment, to reimagine the interior and exterior of The Last Hotel, as an outfit? “I've gravitated toward two things: I really liked the outside of [The Last Hotel]. It shows the history of how it was originally the shoe factory. And then also the way that they decorated all the rooms, how sleek and gorgeous the rooms are. That's what I used for inspiration.”
If interested in attending the finale of Fashion Anarchy, visit the website for tickets and more information.
