LCF exhibit nominated for Conde Nast award

by Sylvia Murphy

A fashion and science collaboration at London College of Fashion (LCF) had been shortlisted for the Conde Nast Traveller Innovation and Design Awards 2010.

The project, named 'Wonderland', combines elements of both fashion and science and is the outcome of a partnership between artist and designer Helen Storey MBE and scientist Professor Tony Ryan OBE, which aimed to make a wider awareness of sustainability and ethical living.

The project involved ten disappearing dresses being showcased up and down the country slowly being lowered into giant fish bowls of water and over a period of time, causing them to dissolve.

The Wonderland tour first began in London in January 2008, moved to Sheffield on June 18 and then travelled to Belfast until November 8.

Weird science 

Professor Storey said: "We chose a dress to manifest our new approach because we wanted to create something beautifully familiar with which to stimulate an emotional connection.

"To watch a dress, that has taken months to create, disappear in a few days seemed to connect directly to that place of unfathomable loss.

"We hope this may work as a metaphor for our disappearing world."

Storey added: "We deliberately collided our differently trained minds to specifically address some of the planet’s greatest problems - lack of drinking water and unrecycable plastics.

"This collision produced a new water purification device and the ‘disappearing plastic bottle’ amongst other ideas."

LCF's new centres

The inspiration behind Wonderland was born after Storey read a book about Quantum Mechanics: "Through LCF’s new centres for the Environment and Fashion & Science and under the initiative of better lives, this way of collided thinking can become powerfully embedded in the next generation of designers,” said Storey.

Voting is open until 30 April and the winners will be announced on 10 May at a celebratory awards ceremony and on CNTraveller.

For more information about the awards and how to vote for Wonderland visit their website.