UV-Dress

Finally, a conceptual piece designed and built by Mark Tauriello. My main focus in creating this vibrant piece was to design a sun dress of the future that is easily wearable and marketable, yet keeping my futuristic design influences, and bold color combinations of course.

This semester at Drew University, I have been learning a lot about how our climate is changing due to the effects of global warming. It made me think about what a sun dress might look like many years from now. I believe that colors for clothing will have to be much brighter to reflect the suns damaging rays away from the body.



Making this garment has given me much needed practice in draping fabrics, working with cotton linen and jersey, and finally constructing an outfit piece by piece. I also realized that my sewing skills are improving and I am gaining more and more patience with making clothing, and having to alter my designs so they are more conceptual. The common line in my blog is always "this piece does run into conceptual issues", so I needed to change that, which I did by making this sun dress with a futuristic and protective twist.



Photographs by: Mark Tauriello
Dress by: Mark Tauriello
Model: Sarah Grealy

Believe it or not, this eccentric piece all came from a pair of red leather pants that were to be trashed and some scrap fabric. The concept of this three piece space age dress is to move the current fashion scene in a new direction, which is a fast forward into an age where we travel via space ships aka the future. This trashy and avant garde dress can be worn several ways, which follows my goal of creating clothing that is interactive. The top covering can be worn in countless ways. You can have it open and folded over creating a collar. This was done by using the waist of the pants for the top covering. You can also zip and snap the top together which creates a protective "pod" which surrounds the neck for that space age look.

Like most of my designs, this too runs into conceptual issues since it would be very unlikely that the general public would begin to wear clothes as off beat as my creations, as much as much as I would like that though. Ultimately my dream is to creating clothing like this for people like Bjork to wear. Constructing this was a challenge. Working with such a thick fabric like leather I learned that you need a different size sewing needle, which I ended up using thanks to this learning experience. Fit was also an issue. Some times one area can be excessively large, while other areas are too tight. Luckily, with such a puzzling piece like this, having areas running larger than others adds to this deconstructed piece in the sense that it provides the silhouette with a new and intriguing shape. This dress was such a blast and excellent learning experience for me in sewing, draping, and sizing. It also served as a good exercise in getting my ideas to come to life.

The pictures taken of this dress was shot and edited by me. I am also very interested in fashion photography, and am contemplating doing that as a career after college. Working with my good friend and excellent model Sarah, I gained experience in doing a real photo shoot, working with a model, and learning which poses photograph well and make this piece look its best. The challenge was making the photos look futuristic since I shot the photos at Drew University, which has a very old world look to it. Luckily this whole project came out perfect, and I can't wait to see what I come out with next.

Heart Transplant Shirt ( Oldie but a goodie )

This is probably one of the very first tee shirts I have ever designed for my label DNA-Apparel and Designs. It is a unisex shirt in which the concept is to replicate an actual heart transplant in a stylish and interactive way. With EKG lines, a felt heart, and a zipper right above the area of transplant, this medic inspired tee shirt creates the possibility for interactive clothing. The zipper can be worn open or closed, each creating a different and more personalized look.

The tee shirt was a basic fruit of the loom cotton shirt, the heart is made from felt, the EKG lines are cut out from transfer paper, and finally the 7 inch zipper sewn diagonally from the neck to above the chest. By far, this is my favorite tee shirt I have designed yet.