As interior designers, we are drawn to creative opportunities. And one of the most exciting and unique opportunities for our Sacramento, California, team is the annual MERGE Fashion Show. It’s like “Project Runway” but with carpet fibers, upholstery, tile, stone, and all kinds of unusual interior building materials.
MERGE, which gets its name from the idea of bringing together people and materials, is a unique night for design professionals. The Northern California Chapter of the International Interior Design Association sponsors a design competition with a dozen local architecture and design firms. The teams create high-fashion clothes from commercial interior products. The finished garments walk the runway and the event raises scholarship dollars for local interior design students.
One of the great things about the event is the collaboration that happens to pull the garment together. In our office, the team included our interior design staff, landscape architects, architects, and our administration staff.
Here’s a walk through the process:
The early stages
It all starts with a kick-off party where all the teams meet to randomly select their theme and manufacturers. Stantec pulled “coral reef” as our theme. Our materials included products from a local lighting distributor, window coverings, upholstery, carpet, and solid surface materials.
We knew right away we did not want to do a literal recreation of a coral reef. Instead, we approached it from a high fashion, avant-garde perspective. So, selecting the items from the five manufacturers was a process. We pulled an array of inspiration images, met to discuss concepts, and had sketching parties to put ideas to paper.
Our design concept
Initial, left, and final concept sketches.
The color palette evolved from what is currently trending on the runway (cobalt blues and hues of pink) and what can be found in coral reefs and the ocean.
Since sustainability was a judging category in the competition, we felt it was imperative to highlight the global epidemic of coral bleaching. It was important for us to make the direct connection between the health of the coral reef ecosystems and the overall health of the oceans and everything in them. This drove our decision to select white and black fabrics, window system material, and the white solid surface.
Collectively, we chose bold, bright colors to allude to the vibrancy of healthy coral reefs. In contrast, the whites reflect coral bleaching, which is plaguing our beautiful underwater ecosystems. Blacks represented the dark mysteriousness of the deep, endless ocean.
The geometric framework of the dress, crafted from carpet and arranged in a variety of pyramid shapes.
A month before the show
Once the materials arrived, we evaluated where we needed more and where we could reduce. It’s about finding the balance between color and material.
The first concept for the dress drastically changed when we started working with the material. Ultimately, we came up with the concept of creating a dimensional patchwork dress comprised of geometric triangular shapes. This new direction helped us incorporate the lighting in a more meaningful way.
The willingness to stop and reassess made our final garment much stronger than if we had been less bold. Our Stantec team has participated in six MERGE shows, but this year there was a twist. The organizers gave us a month to create the final product. In previous years, we had four hours on the day of the show—from nothing to runway. The additional time made the design process more complicated, but ultimately more rewarding.
