Designer Interviews
Food & Fashion invites us to ponder food-inspired fashion pieces, as well as fashion from our fridge. There’s also creative processes that include food and fashion in ways that speak to cultural heritage and multi-aspected identity. In this interview series, designers and artists delve into their creative processes with Fulbright Visiting Scholar Lara Rössig.
Chris Campbell, designer of Shoe Bakery, invites viewers to indulge in shared nostalgic passions for dessert and discover how seasonal colors in food and fashion are intertwined. Olivia Cheng, designer of Dauphinette, ensures no waste as she traces the food used in her fashion creations to the producers’ dinner plates. Lastly, digital artist Rewa Richter pairs fashion brands with food to create a captivating fusion that speaks volumes about the essence and character of each visual tale. Together, these designers and artists reinforce the sociocultural significance of food and fashion through their works and production.
Read more about the project and watch the video interviews embedded below!
Designer Video Interviews
Exploring the Creative Links between Food and Fashion – A Designer's Perspective
Chris Campbell, Shoe Bakery
Have Your Cake and Wear it Too – Fashion Inspired by Desserts
Chris Campbell, Shoe Bakery
Fusion Fashion – A Nostalgic Approach to Childhood Memories of Food
Chris Campbell, Shoe Bakery
Eating Fashion, Wearing Food – A Circular Approach
Olivia Cheng, Dauphinette
Connecting the Dots: Food, Fashion and Culture
Olivia Cheng, Dauphinette
To Eat With Your Eyes – The Aestheticization of Food and Fashion
Rewa Richter, digital artist
Forging New Identities – Matching Food and Fashion in Digital Art
Rewa Richter, digital artist
Deliciously Nostalgic, Dangerously Sweet – (In)Edible Jewelry
Rewa Richter, digital artist
Having Your Cake and Eating it Too
In 2018, I was accepted as Ph.D. candidate at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany. Driven by my research interests in popular culture, identity, sustainability, and gender, I started to investigate the connection between food and fashion—an important topic that impacts individuals and societies all over the globe.
In hope of conducting research to strengthen my understanding of the food/fashion relationship, I wrote to Dr. Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of The Museum at FIT (MFIT). “Let’s talk” was Valerie Steele’s response to my lengthy email. To my delight, MFIT was already actively working on an exhibition highlighting the numerous intersections of food and fashion. Equipped with a Fulbright scholarship, I travelled from Germany to New York in June 2021 to support the curation of the exhibition.
In order to look beyond the consumption of food-inspired fashion pieces, I decided to approach designers who include food and fashion in their creative processes. These insights are invaluable contributions to the study of the two subject areas because they reveal how intersectional elements, such as gender, race, and class, are reflected in the work of each interviewee.
The following interview series includes two female and one male participant from the United States and Germany, each with diverse ethnic backgrounds. They shine a light on issues of cultural heritage, identity, and gender that come to the fore in their creative projects. The interviews serve as a testament to the sociocultural significance of the fusion of food and fashion that holds the potential to ignite conversations about sustainable practices, social consciousness, and the power of transformation in both industries.
I want to thank my interview partners for their time and consideration and am grateful for the ability to share some highlights of the conversation surrounding food and fashion with the help of MFIT and the curators of the Food & Fashion exhibition, Melissa Marra-Alvarez and Elizabeth Way. Food and fashion permeate every facet of our daily lives, urging us to explore the complex connections of what we wear and what we eat, a pursuit for which the exhibition acts as a catalyst.