On View Image
various fashion garments on mannequins
PAST EXHIBITION
Pop-Up Exhibit: Fashioning the Future Student Design Showcase
April 22, 2021 - May 9, 2021

Fashioning the Future

Using Unconventional Materials to Address Society's Wicked Problems

Much like the artists whose work is featured in the exhibition Pressing Issues: Printmaking as Social Justice in 1930s United States, apparel design students from the University of Minnesota College of Design, Studio III course were tasked with responding to the current moment through the lens of design. Design, like art, offers imagination to not only solve the problems in front of us, but to imagine and create an alternative future than the one we seem headed for. From proposed solutions for a fashion industry plagued by labor and environmental injustices to the use of clothing as a tool to help those in their communities, the exhibition Pressing Issues was used as a prompt to push students to move beyond designing for consumption. This created an opportunity for designers to apply their skill set to develop new ways of thinking and working, and to use new approaches required for living with and solving wicked, systemic and intersecting issues.

Download and read the designers' concept statements (PDF)

Designers: Erin Briggs, Qianna Peterson, Jaden Evenson, Elliot Floum, Abby Harrold, Allison Holm, Katie Johnson, Hannah Kasner, Tyanna Man, Neema Mochoge, Sonu Lane, Siobhan Sullivan, Summer Vue, Ava Wagner, Laine Williams, Cindy Leewood, Kylie Halverson, Bridget Holzer

ON THE WAM BLOG: Want to more about the class and teaching apparel design during a pandemic? Read a behind-the-scenes interview on the WAM blog with Professor Lindsey Strange, who led this spring's student designers through the process of bringing their concepts to life. Read more >>

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