Concept to Object: RAIR Project

Thursday: April 13th, 2017.

As most you may know I am a Fashion Design major at Moore college of Art and Design. For our first project we were given random materials that were recycled for RAIR as our first project. For an unconventional design.

We partnered up with Philly RAIR as well as USchool, a highschool in Philadelphia to complete our projects.

"RAIR is a nonprofit organization that builds awareness about sustainability issues through art and design. Situated inside a construction and demolition waste recycling company in northeast Philadelphia, RAIR offers artists studio space and access to more than 350 tons of materials per day. Since 2010, RAIR has provided a unique platform for artists to work at the intersection of art, industry and sustainability, while producing content that challenges perceptions of waste culture."

To get us started for this project we would make swatches every week from 6 by 6 to bigger then that with whatever we wanted to use to help us think outside of the box. We used things such as food, office supplies, fabric, anything you could imagine. 

Examples down below from my fashion instagram: jackiekenseyfashioninsider

After a few weeks of thinking out of the box using different fastening methods from hot glue, to safety pins, corsets, to sewing we used it on our practice swatches to help us get to the bigger picture.

We were handed the Rair materials which were tissue paper like materials, wipey pads, carpet, metallic bubble wrap, plastic, pool cover material, and so much more.

After that we did more swatches and headed to the drawing board. With ideas based on our swatches of material we had decided to use.

The dress I originally was going to make as a final dress changed after the critique and I ended up with my colorful hand painted dress idea. I tweaked the idea into a boxy off the shoulder dress with no zipper to be more mod and less time consuming.

Then to the final product:

After the final project we met back up with USchool to see their projects and held a fashion shoot at Moore in front of the RAIR wall in our galleries that we held our RAIR art show as well. 

This was the process of turning a concept into an object all made out of recycled materials. 

And after this we received our professional photos from the photographer.

Professional single photos of my RAIR Dress:

Moore RAIR Projects:

Moore and USchool RAIR Projects:

Hope you all enjoyed learning about concept to object with our RAIR materials project and that you learned the process. Within Moore's first year fashion class's new program concept to object. 

And I wanted to let everyone know I declared my double minor for textiles and business!

Thanks for reading!

Jackie Kensey xx