Seth Aaron Henderson is a fashion designer and freelance stylist who won Project Runway’s Seventh Season and currently resides in Vancouver, WA with his wife and two children. With his incredible SolarWorld collection as seen in last fall’s Portland Fashion Week, Seth Aaron draws on his passion for a domestically manufactured solar solution to pressing energy, environmental and economic challenges facing the country and his interest in exploring the technology’s aesthetic possibilities.
Local Eco Fashion designer Renalie Bailey’s creations will grace the band, Me and My Arrow, during Minnesota Fashion’s Voltage on April 15th, 2011. Renalie takes seriously the effects that fashion has on the environment. She re-purposes all materials and uses fine eco-friendly textiles such as bamboo, hemp and cotton. Renalie studied apparel design at MCTC, where she was the recipient of the DivaMN student design award. While in attendance at the College of St. Catherine, she received an ITAA award for excellence in marketable textile design. Inspired largely by hardware stores and found objects, Renalie has been accused of designing things no one in their right mind would wear. Renalie also designs handbags and soon hopes to incorporate solar cells in them to charge personal electronic devices such as iPODs, cell phones and MP3 players.
CounterCouture is a Minneapolis-based upcycling fashion brand that fuses design, ecology, social responsibility, style and sense. What is upcycling? It is the process of converting waste materials into new materials or products of better quality or a higher environmental value. The brand was founded in 2009 by Angie Arner and consists of a small creative collective of local designers.
Jenny Carle is a Saint Paul Minnesota based clothing designer specializing in feminine and classic silhouettes. Her work incorporate found and reused textiles, and is strongly influenced by vintage design and the history of costume. A native of St. Paul’s Eastside, she obtained her B.A. in Apparel Design and Art from the College of St. Catherine and launched Jenny Carle Designs in 2008.
Kathryn Sterner lives and works in the Twin Cities. She draws inspiration from places and people, from the attitudes and environments that they create. Each garment is handcrafted and no two are alike. While she is constantly changing and experiencing new things that impact her designs, she sees to it that each garment portrays its own unique spirit.
The Naya brand was created for women who want beautiful, comfortable shoes that leave a softer footprint on our earth. The creation of each Naya shoe begins with a feminine design with rich, vibrant colors and creative details. From there we infuse each style with exceptional comfort, using soft leather linings and layers of premium cushioning. Whenever possible, the Naya collection includes materials that are gentler on the planet, such as vegetable-tanned leathers and linings, natural cork and natural or recycled content fabrics.
In May of 2006, Sarah Hoese opened Rewind, a tiny clothing and accessories shop on Johnson Street in NE Minneapolis. It was chock full of vintage and one-of-a-kind contemporary goodness. Word soon spread about Rewind’s amazing selection of 70′s and 80′s styles and fantastic prices on mid-century items. Within a year, business demanded that the shop expand. It moved one storefront down, almost doubling in size. It expanded again in 2009. Thanks to the amazing support, there will be a second location opening May, 2011 at 48th and Chicago, South Minneapolis. We hand-select each piece of merchandise and new items are added daily. The shop stocks vintage and contemporary clothing for women and men as well as an extensive collection of costume jewelry, shoes, purses and accessories. Our affordable pricing means that items turn over quickly, so it pays to visit often! We hope you enjoy Rewind as much as we do!
KR Designs is a local Minneapolis jewelry line designed to be unique and make a statement. All pieces are one of a kind, and a mix of new, vintage, exotic and unusual to create a modern look. This line trendy and bold yet timeless; feminine yet tough; it’s alluring, classic, diverse and a striking addition to any woman’s wardrobe.
Meet The Talented Sol Inspirations Design Challenge Finalists:
Christopher Straub is a Minnesota designer who was recently a finalist on the smash hit reality TV design challenge “Project Runway.” He finds inspiration in natural surroundings in Minnesota: flowers, leaves, rocks, sky and water. He focuses on hand-crafted textual treatments to give volume and artistry to his fashion. Being eco-responsible is important to him in both design and home life. For fashion, he uses vintage and found fabrics and has been using organic cotton jersey to create custom-printed material for different projects. He also created a line of one-of-a-kind underwear made from recycled graphic tee shirts.
Ra’mon-Lawrence Coleman was a finalist and fan favorite on Season 6 of “Project Runway” and has a BFA in Fashion Design from SAIC in Chicago. He is constantly inspired by the world around him and his interactions with others. He translates emotions received from artwork, music, architecture, literature and nature into his designs. He is committed to domestic production of all goods he works with as well as utilizing either recycled or sustainable fibers in the materials he uses in his designs. In his custom designs, he repurposes as many materials for details as possible.
Allison Helliwell graduated from Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago with a degree in Fashion Design and works as a clothing designer specializing in women’s ready to wear apparel for her own original clothing label, Allilamodie Designs. She does everything from design to making the patterns to sewing the finished product. She sets herself apart from other designers by incorporating hand knitting and using high-end materials in unconventional ways. In design work, she mainly uses natural fiber fabrics and fair trade yarn that encourages financial stability in poor countries. She also uses reclaimed yarn and vintage fabrics when available. Synthetic materials, which are mostly products of recycling are also used in her work.
Tara Latour, owner of Tara Latour Designs is a Minnesota native who finds inspiration from the landscapes of places from her childhood. She studied fashion design at the Rhode Island School of Design, Academy of Art in San Francisco and Parsons New School for Design, where she received at BFA in Fashion Design. She showed her first collection at New York Fashion Week and was featured on “Good Morning America” as a finalist for BRIDES magazine Operation Dream Dress. She is currently living in Minneapolis, with her own bridal label – Tara Latour Designs, based in the Arts District of NE Minneapolis, creating gowns that are unique, wearable and offer something fresh and new to the industry. She is known for attention to details and hand-done fabric treatment and hand dyed fabrics that create an ethereal, romantic and timeless feeing. She loves using color in wedding gowns, and also designs ready to wear and eveningwear that embodies the same design theory as her bridal collection.
Atom Pechman & Jenn Bratvold entered the competition as partners. Atom has a Fashion Design degree from MCAD and has been working as an artist and designer in the Twin Cities for 10 years. His emphasis is on furniture and sculpture, and works with various materials including metal, wood, fiberglass, plastics and rubbers. His studio has become a dream shop for prototyping and one-off creations. Jenn has a Studio Art degree from the University of Iowa and is graduating from St. Catherine University this May with a degree in Apparel Design. She’s new to the Twin Cities fashion scene but has designed clothes for several fashion shows and made custom garments. She loves old film costuming and classic silhouettes. Her style is very structure based and she prefers to use wool and cotton, or find quality, unique fabrics at secondhand stores. Their eco-friendly design style includes shopping locally, reusing garments and textiles instead of buying new fabric and reviving clothing from secondhand stores, yard sales and their own closets. Making high quality, classic clothing is important to them because it will be durable and fashionable for a greater amount of time, reducing the number of replacement items.
Niki English has been a part of the Minneapolis fashion scene since 2007, when she began selling leather handbags made from thrift store jackets at Cliche Boutique. She studied Apparel Design at the University of Minnesota, where she learned pattern making and construction. She often reuses fabric or castoff materials in her designs to create garments that are unexpected, extreme and conceptual. Her goal in design is to make people think outside the comfortable realm of clothing and consider something completely different. She commonly dyes her own fabric with natural or organic dyes and wants to demonstrate that all types of clothing can be made with an eco-concious mind without adhering to one aesthetic.
