No, Supima is not another random designer you've never heard of. Rather, it's a fairly old non-profit corporation that purveys and promotes cotton grown here in the United States. ("World's Finest Cotton" is their not-so-humble slogan.) This year, the company sponsored a design competition between eight graduating seniors from Pratt, the Rhode Island School of Design, Savannah College of Art and Design, and FIT. The stakes: a cool $10,000. The judges: Nicole Miller and some other people. The host: Rachel Zoe, as effusive and hyper-zealous as a teacher running a third-grade science fair.
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Jusil Carroll with Host Rachel Zoe.
I wouldn't say that everyone who was in the contest deserves instant fame and fortune. A lot of the designs were blunt, one-note instruments, all edgy and avant garde but without any of the immanent consciousness of tradition and history that gives great fashion its depth. Rookie stuff, in other words. A lot of the designs were also overpowered by their (presumably mandatory) materials; Supima denim, "World's Finest" or not, made for some inescapably inelegant eveningwear. But I will say this: every one of these young designers-to-be had a distinct voice, and that's impressive. MaRu Jung, a student from Pratt, showed off some simple, strapless cocktail dresses whose understatement was completely contradicted – in a good way – by the designs on the fabric itself, which had the opulent warmth of Victorian ceiling frescos. Dara Rosen, also from Pratt, showed off some great pieces that straddled the line between elegance and flirtiness, most notably a single-shoulder cocktail dress in hand-dyed, purple twill. Rachel Pullman, from Rhode Island, was perhaps the only person to master that denim, and she did so by rendering it nearly invisible (or at least inconsequential) in a loudly modernist black evening dress with a gold, rectangular belt buckle. Marlow Larson (from Savannah College) did great things with tea-dye.
There was also, of course, a whole lot of Helena Bonham Carter unwearable bullshit. Pullman had a sleeveless mini with a puffy train that made the model look like some sort of beetle. Larson ruined some perfectly beautiful dresses with gaudy costume jewels. Lorena Cuevas (also from Savannah) seemed to think that no dress was complete without incredibly pointy shoulder protrusions. The only thing that could possibly explain the overabundance of netting accents in the work of Amy Bittner (FIT) is if she were a professional basketweaver and/or fisherwoman.
The winner ended up being Jusil Carroll, a student at FIT, and I suspect it was a matter of pure contrast. Her stuff was classy, wearable, and unremarkable. But she did have one piece that could hold its own against all the other moleskine daydreams: a sleeveless evening gown with two leather platforms jutting out from each hip. It wouldn't be out-of-place on the girlfriend of Lando Calrissian.
