Phillip Lim Promises ‘Looks That Serve’ at Supima Design Competition

Emma Joan Foley of Parsons School of Design was crowned as the winner of the 17th annual Supima Design Competition (SDC) on Thursday.

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The competition tasked Foley and her fellow five finalists, top BFA graduates from leading design schools across the country, with creating womenswear capsule collections using at least 80 percent Supima American-grown Pima cotton. The recent grads presented their final designs via a live runway show at the Prince George Ballroom as part of New York Fashion Week ( NYFW ).

A distinguished panel of 17 judges were tasked with selecting the winner—and recipient of $10,000.

“I’m still processing what I just witnessed; the storytelling, the innovation, the execution,” host and award-winning designer Phillip Lim said before the runway show began. “I’m announcing it now: you will be served.”

Foley explored the “interplay between perceived and physical forms, drawing inspiration from body schema and the theoretical grotesque,” according to her artist statement. The “root concept” of her collection is a reflection on “how our mental perceptions of our own forms may inform the silhouette,” she said in a video aired before her five designs—inspired by bygone pieces of the 15th and 16th centuries displaying extreme contrast—made their debut.

“[Body schema] is rooted in the theory of the grotesque, which is like, back to theory about what the grotesque form is, and it’s essentially how, mentally, you physically readjust for how you perceive your own body,” Foley told Sourcing Journal. “I like how our mental states affect how we dress, that’s really interesting to me. So, looking at theory of that to kind of form shapes are maybe a little bit off, looking at historical references to kind of form extremes of tightness and volume, and then exaggerated them and shifted them to apply to the theory.”

Her pieces included denim armor-inspired pants and an asymmetrical bustier with buckle details as well as a twill coat sporting a high-neck undershirt with coated paneling and piping. A velveteen-draped, open-back dress featured coated inner panels and etched details—all appearing to be, in effect, leather.

“[Foley’s] collection looked like she was using leather,” Supima’s Buxton Midyette told Sourcing Journal. “It was super amazing; the coating and manipulations done to achieve that look. I think that was really a deciding factor in her selection.”

While the designers were given 20 percent of material to play with outside of the required 80 percent Supima cotton, Foley’s experience with cotton and leather led to her decision to incorporate the techniques used with leatherwork , without using leather.

“We’re allowed to use 20 percent, but I was like, let’s figure out how to do cotton,” Foley said. “I did a bunch of trials of different coatings and figured out what was giving the most similar body and look of leather, so they’re all a variety of coatings—some liquid latex , some wax.”

The project—an extension of her thesis at Parsons —originally came from a “darker mindset.”

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“I was looking at it in terms of eating disordered bodies; that’s where I came from, specifically athletes that struggle with eating disorders and how that affects movement,” Foley said. “I’ve always been fascinated with the concept, and I don’t think it’s really explored in silhouettes. So that was the basis of my thesis, and I tried to expand it in a way that was less solely negative and more in terms of everyone has a vision of their body —whether negative, positive, neutral—and that affects how we move to set that into shapes.”

In addition to Foley, finalists included Marina Lamphier of Drexel University , Mina Piao of the Fashion Institute of Technology, Lizzy Truitt of Kent State University, Henry Hawk of Rhode Island School of Design and Jules Gourley of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. CFDA award-winning eveningwear designer Bibhu Mohapatra celebrated his 10th year as a mentor to the finalists, providing insight, support and counsel to the contestants for the duration of the program.

Lim, who is nearing the vicennial of 3.1 Phillip Lim , expressed gratitude to Supima for creating a platform to promote the “talents of the nation.”

“When I was first starting , there weren’t opportunities like this; what Supima has done for the industry at large, I have to say a personal thank you for bringing everyone together,” the creative director and co-founder said to the audience. “Fashion can be such a lonely and difficult journey—love, doubts, hard work, patience—but it’s also the place where dreams are designed.”

In this case, they were designed with fabric provided by Supima’s partners, including Albini , Colorich, Metro Dyeing LLC, Olah Inc., Olimpias, Rainbow, Asher LA and Kaihara Denim . Supima required participants to “rethink” familiar fabric conventions and consider the woven fabrications customarily used as high-end shirting and the fine jersey found in lingerie as well as the “ sturdy denims ,” velveteens and twills making up premium jeans and sportswear.

“Supima has been doing this for the past 17 years because we really believe in the importance of supporting the next generation of designers,” Midyette , the luxury nonprofit’s vice president of marketing and promotions, told Sourcing Journal. “We saw a real opportunity to work with the schools and help their graduates make the transition from the academic experiences into the industry—an area that there wasn’t a lot of support for—that we could come in and make a difference with these young designers that really helped them with their careers.”

That’s true. Previous SDC winners (and finalists, for that matter) include Taku Yhim , who is now designing for Thom Browne , and 2018 SDC finalist Genevieve Lake , who said the experience opened an “unimaginable” amount of doors, helping her become an associate designer for Ralph Lauren .

As for what Foley will do with her $10,000 cash prize, the designer from Minneapolis shrugged.

“I mean, I’m going to start paying my rent here in New York,” she said. “Pay the rent so I can keep creating.”

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