The Evolution of Fashion in the Matter of Minutes : On the Runway

Pitter. Patter. Splatter. My eyes followed the water droplets ascending onto the stage and bouncing into puddles. The rain challenge is here, on my favorite fashion television show: Project Runway. My mind was racing thinking of the wild fantasies the designers will bring to life through clothes with this challenge. But, this excitement is obliterated when I look at the first dress about to walk down the runway. It is just a plain white dress, and I am horrified. The model begins to strut down the runway and I see splatters of color appear all over the once lifeless fabric. My jaw drops. As more and more drops of water hit the dress, pockets of colored dye burst into abstract patterns. I’ve never seen something in fashion transform so effortlessly. A dress made by contestant Sean Kelly was truly a work of art that blew my mind.

Growing up, I didn’t consider clothes as fashion. Clothes were just a basic need, an object that always stays constant and static. However, nothing about that white dress I witnessed in that moment was static; it was dynamic. It had movement, it transformed, and it conveyed a story. Even writing that sentence surprises me because I never thought I would speak about a dress in such a manner. The explosion of color on that garment opened my eyes to the idea of the power of fashion, and it made me even more passionate about it. The way the piece interacted with its surrounding elements sent the message to me that fashion doesn’t have to be restricted by boundaries, in rain or shine. 

This episode of Project Runway aired all the way back in 2014, and fashion has always been innovating and continues to innovate. A more recent example that blew my mind was Bella Hadid at the Coperni Spring 2023 show. Bella Hadid walked down the runway in nothing but nude underwear, and minutes later, she was wearing a white slip dress created using spray on fabric. Dr. Manuel Torres, who is the managing director of Fabrican Ltd and the inventor of the spray on fabric, applied this spray on fabric directly to Hadid’s body in order to create this minimalist Coperni dress. The spray on fabric first looks like a bunch of spider webs or strings, but the fibers soon thicken to dry into a pebbled fabric. After the fabric was sprayed all the way, the head of design at Coperni, Charlotte Raymond, walked on stage to shape the fabric at the neckline and cut the hem and a slit into the dress. Coperni not only wanted to show the consideration of innovation, science, and technology that goes into all their work, but also they were putting on a show and creating an experience by showing the entire process right on that stage. 

Throughout decades, we have seen and studied the evolution of fashion and how trends and silhouettes always circle back. But, I think it is insane how we are able to witness a transformation of a piece within minutes. With Sean Kelly, that collection with the color dress won him that season of Project Runway and the stunt at the Coperni show is something that will go down in history forever. Being creative and innovative is rewarding and it is always inspiring to see people push the limits.