Paper Dolls – FAT 2011

Description

Breeyn McCarney works to balance her interest in politics and world events with her drive to create beautiful objects of fashion. She loves old-fashioned craftsmanship; utilizing embroidery, knitting, leathercraft, and beading to embellish her garments. With a focus on custom-fit designs; she is building a circle of clients with whom she creates one-of-a-kind tailored garments that highlight the individual assets and attributes of each woman’s body. Her signature eponymous line reflects her environmental and political values, only using ethically sourced natural fibre fabrics to create her luxurious pieces. Her diffusion line, AnotherWordForPink is a more colourful, economical, street-wear version of her vision. McCarney’s latest exploration of natural fibres has brought her to the delicate world of paper clothing.

Christopher Lewis is a Toronto-based creative technologist, photographer and interactive developer. He experiments with real-world interaction and “getting off the screen”. Christopher believes that the DIY community is essential to driving the development of mainstream technologies by making interactive hardware ubiquitous. His goal is to create approachable technology that is fun to use.

“Paper Dolls” was a special project for Toronto Alternative Fashion Week [FAT]. Conceived two years ago, McCarney was excited to have an opportunity to bring to life dresses constructed entirely of paper, born of a love of paper doilies. Each dress demonstrates hours of painstaking hand-cut patterns achieved with xacto-knives. Her best friend and collaborator, Christopher Lewis, took on the role of Creative Technologist, enhancing the dresses with LEDs and microcontrollersto create a juxtaposition of high-tech and low-tech, resulting in otherworldly pieces. FAT marks phase one of the collaboration between Lewis and McCarney; they will continue to push the tech aspect of the designs which will culminate in a lookbook and video towards the end of summer ’11.