QUT’s first Honours graduates in Fashion Design: Carla O’Donnell, Paula Dunlop, and Dani Klein investigate the processes and meanings of contemporary fashion through their practice. But if the process favours the mind, the outcomes are resolutely fixed on the body.
SLOW FASHION is an exhibition of the graduates’ sensual and, more importantly, wearable collections.
About the designers
A magician of form, Carla O’Donnell’s collection explores clothing as an intimate space. The garments, loosely constructed from boxes of varied shapes and sizes, results in a unique aesthetic that is both avant-garde and quietly glamorous.
Paula Dunlop arrives at form, shape and volume via chance operations, allowing her to develop clothing shapes which would be otherwise unimaginable. This playful process is tempered by Dunlop’s very conscious choice of ethically sustainable fabric – fair trade organically grown cotton, bricolaged with recycled kimonos and saris.
The fashion classic, the little black dress is the starting point for Dani Klein. Using a 1940s vintage black wool crepe dress as a design template, Klein takes its essence through a series of transformations of shape, cut and colour. Abstracted, cut up and reassembled, Klein’s final collection sees the little black dress as beautifully de-familiar.
SLOW FASHION is an insight into a new fashion time.
Image: little black dress Dani Klein.
Photographer: Sonja de Sterke
