Design Students

Dress Form Contest

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Those enrolled in the Fashion Design and Fashion Business programs at Genesee Community College were given the amazing opportunity to win dress forms donated to the school by PGM Dress Forms, the leading dress form manufacturer in the United States, based out of California.154836_580970075263689_1180436399_n The winners of these dress forms are career-driven, hardworking students, who are also extremely talented designers at GCC. The dress forms will make a large impact on these three creative women, and surely help them to accomplish future career goals, which they hold dearly and consider with upmost seriousness.

Accomplished students Candace Cooper, Alaina Shannon, and Natalie Brown are the winners of the 2014 Dress Form Contest! All of the girls wrote entry essays entailing what they would do if they won a PGM dress form, and how this award would help to accomplish their career goals. Candace Cooper writes, “When Professor Ehrhart initially notified me of the amazing opportunity of the dress form competition, I was overly thrilled at the news! Being that I am a design student I would love to own a dress form. I’ve always wanted to invest into one, but looking online, the prices were a little intimidating with them ranging from $1,500 to $2,000.” Candace’s collection entitled “ÉCLAT” will be featured in the upcoming GCC 33rd Annual Fashion Show entitled Ethereal. Alaina addresses why she would love to win a PGM dress form and how it would help her to achieve her artistic vision. In her contest essay, she states that, “By winning a dress form I would be capable of anything. As an artist, often times I conjure up creativity at the most random and unexpected times as my mind begins to soar into a new and exciting realm. When I visualize an idea in my head, I feel the urgency to get right to work. I sketch my ideas, gather and cut fabric, and begin to layout the image that is in my head. However, tedious measurements, and the annoyance of making a human stand shivering cold for forty minutes while being draped and pinned is a nuisance. I often find myself wishing I could constantly have access to a dress form so that I could put my creative, crazy mind at ease.”  Alaina’s designs will be featured in the upcoming GCC Fashion Show as well, in a scene entitled “Americana”. Natalie Brown envisions what it would be like to own a personal dress form in her contest essay; writing that, “If I had my own dress form, I could create my own design studio space in my room at my house. I currently have my very own sewing machine that I bought myself, so having my own dress form would complete my own personal working space.” Natalie Brown’s designs will also be featured in the upcoming GCC Ethereal Fashion Show. Her scene is called “Revival”, the featured clothing is previously owned and repurposed in order to be transformed from an old garment into a piece that is new and exciting. These dress forms are certainly in good hands; Congratulations Candace, Alaina, and Natalie, we can’t wait to see what amazing designs you all create for the upcoming fashion show and in the near future!

Also, on behalf of everyone in the fashion program at Genesee Community College I’d like to give a big thank you to PGM Dress Forms for donating three dress forms to these well-deserving girls, and to Professor Ehrhart and Professor Dudkowski for continuing to offer this amazing opportunity to GCC’s wonderfully talented design students.

-Ami Cornell

Fashion Forward is Eternally Greatful

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The fashion show on Saturday was a total success, we heard nothing but compliments and positive feedback! I am incredibly relieved that the show is over however, it feels like a bitter sweet ending. I am excited to begin a new chapter in my life, but it saddens me that routine hard work is now over. The challenges that we faced were difficult, but they made life exciting and gave a sense of pride when those challenges were overcome.
On behalf of the entire fashion show production class, I must thank everyone who participated in the fashion show. This production required so many helping hands and it wouldn’t have been possible without the help and support from our school and community. I myself would like to thank Mike Perry, for devoting so much time into editing our pre scene and preshow videos; Marc Tillery, for editing our music and making our show sound spectacular; Barry Chow, for returning to us with just enough time to organize the video recording of our show; Amy Slusser, for guiding her class to make a ugly space beautiful, making our design theme carry through to our after party, and refueling our guests with refreshments and hor’dourves; Al Leight for creating our Behind the Scenes and DVD; Tim Landers and his maintenance team, for putting up with our preciseness and setting up our stage decorations; Ashley Ricketts, for filming, directing, and editing our preshow video ; Security, for protecting our merchandise; Gary Glaser, for photographing our show; Todd Sloat, for lighting up our stage and adding dramatic effects to the scenes; all of our designers, interns, hair/make up stylists, models, parents, and everyone else!

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The most important person I would like to thank would be Mr. Rick Dudkowski, our fashion show production professor who led our class to obtaining a impactful reinvented show. Without his guidance we would’ve ran into many more issues and wouldn’t have been able to produce the quality show we had. I recommend to all upcoming fashion show production students to LISTEN TO MR. D!!!
Honestly, this show came together because of a group effort and no one individual would have been able to do this alone. Each and every person that participated in this show played a key role and we cannot thank you enough.
The lessons I have learned in this fashion show production class are priceless, I will take them with me throughout my lifetime and will always remember that teamwork can achieve greatness.

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A New Show

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Fashion Forward, the title and theme for the upcoming fashion show at the end of April, has been completely reinvented from previous years. The 32nd annual fashion show is features an array of new aspects to the fashion program. The fashion show is featuring original designs created by freshman students, sophomore students, and community members. These designs will be created exclusively for Fashion Forward this year. In light of the large donation of over 40 gowns to the fashion department, from M. A. Carr Bridal, Fashion Forward is featuring reinvented deigns. These bridal gowns will be completely deconstructed to create a totally new look. I have heard talk of many designers even dying the gowns different colors to stray away from the classic bridal white image.

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In conjunction with the design aspect of the show, we also have broadened our merchandising horizons. This will be the first year in GCC fashion show history that we will be featuring a New York City Trunk show from Buffalo David Bitton. This famous designer has been kind enough to send us their upcoming line of clothing, which will be featured in the scene Reckless in Fashion Forward.
When recreating this show we looked at all aspects of designing the show from chair covers to changing the show times, eventually after a lot of discussion, we decided the most impactful aspect about the show we could change would be the commentary. Therefore we came up with a concept to remove a live commentator and transition between scenes with video commentary. These videos would be individually be created by the scene coordinators to give the audience an idea of what they will be seeing next and where the inspiration for the scene came from. The video commentary will be a tremendous change to previous years but hopefully with a lot of hard work we will be able to make this change a positive one, and have a show worth remembering.