The Montreal designer Joseph Helmer collaborated with glass artist Jean-Marie Giguère to create this dress, one of several that included glass elements that were the talk of the 2011 Spring Fashion Shows in Montreal.
Hands-down the best collaboration of the 14 fashion designer-glass artist creations that were unveiled during a fashion show held at the Glass Art Association of Canada 2010 conference was the joint creation by Montreal designer known simply as “Helmer“ who teamed up with glass artist Jean-Marie Giguère to create a dress with 800 individual glass elements (the audience-choice winning design that was featured in an article on the fashion show in the current issue of GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly). The event, held at the Montreal Science Center during Montreal’s year-long “City of Glass“ celebration, was produced by Laura Donefer, in hopes that her annual fashion show, which had become a staple of glass artist conferences, would branch out and take root among serious fashion designers. The recent Montreal Spring 2011 fashion shows has seen exactly that, with Helmer’s line of dresses for next spring featuring glass elements that entranced the Montreal fashion press.
Black taffeta meets glass in this collaboration between artist Jean-Marie Giguère and designer Joseph Helmer.
“Helmer, who won our haute couture contest, has actually continued with glass and presented three divine haute couture dresses including glass at the recent fashion shows in Montreal,” said Laura Donefer in an email to GLASS. “I was blown away. This is what I had kind of dreamed of.”
Donefer continues: “He designed a white gown with blue glass, an amazing gown with glass as a collar and down the sides (with black taffeta as well), and a creation with an asymetrical sleeve with black cloth and a red full length skirt, with green hunks of glass up the side!”
In summation, she said simply: “SO COOL!”
The fashion press were enthralled with the results. Writing in the fashion blog Dualité, Dahlia Pham captures the impact of these dresses on the audience for the fashion show:
“This season, he [Helmer] had abandoned his trademark patchwork for the delicate ensemble of glass embellishments and gigantic tulle hats and boleros,” she writes. “I didn’t pick up a press kit for his show, but the whole atmosphere felt like I was stepping into a fairytale dream, with fitting classical music in the background. Slow did the models walk, as the outfits were decisively not easy to walk in and could shatter at any moment. Dress after dress, the crowded were stupefied into silence, it was so quiet you could hear the shutters from the photographers’ pit.”
See short videos of Helmer’s glass dresses on the Spring 2011 show runway courtesy of Dualité.
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