According to Hiedi Klum, “In fashion one day your in and the next day your out!” This was the case in the 9th episode of this season’s Project Runway when a designer was kicked out of the competition. The designer’s name was Shirin Askari and her crime was sending a badly put together black gown down the runway.
The challenge given to the designers was to create a stage costume for the pop star Christiana Aguilera, and to be inspired by Bob Mackie, a legendary costume designer. The black gown shown above was Shirin’s answer to the design challenge. The gown was criticized by the judges; one even called it “a witch’s costume without the hat.” Even Tim Gunn, the mentor of the designers found it to be “student work.”
So what was so wrong with this dress that led the designer to be cut from the competition? It was the lack of unity, the use to two focal points and an unbalance in this design that led to the cut.
There was a disconnect between the top and bottom half of the dress. The top was very structured, especially on the neckline which had angular crisscross lines, and the bottom half flowed and had frayed strips of cloth. There is no transition in the center of the dress in the form of a belt or something that balanced the hard angular look on top with the soft flowy look on the bottom. The judges noticed these two conflicting views and not able to unify the two different aspects.
The lack of unity was also due to the fact that the gown had two competing focal points; the neckline and the bottom skirt. Both fight for the viewer’s attention. This creates unbalance thus the lack of equilibrium leaves the viewer uneasy and dissatisfied.
The bottom skirt eventually wins the battle for our attention because of its sheer weight; the strips of fabric make the bottom seem heavy in comparison to the top. This lends to the effect of imbalance as the top is fairly lightweight. Furthermore, the sudden introduction of the white sequence strips on the bottom, a color which is not repeated anywhere on the top of the dress, also adds to the sense of disconnect. Putting in white, a contrasting color to the predominantly black emphasizes the pulling apart of the design by the viewer.
This is an example of what happens when a designer ignores the fundamentals of design. If only Shirin had remembered the Gestalt principles of how to achieve unity in a design, she would have been in instead of out!
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