Press Release
Bronze A' Design Award in Fashion, Apparel and Garment Design Goes to Humpback Whale Song Conceptual Fashion Design by Maryam Yazdanpanah
The international grand jury of the 2021 - 2022 A' Design Award & Competition recognizes Maryam Yazdanpanah for fashion, apparel and garment design
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 22, 2022 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has announced that Humpback Whale Song Conceptual Fashion Design by Maryam Yazdanpanah, designed for Saaku, has been granted the Bronze A' Design Award in the Fashion, Apparel and Garment Design category. The result belongs to the 2021 - 2022 A' Design Award & Competition and was reached through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who assessed anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
About the Bronze A' Design Award
The Bronze A' Design Award is given to outstanding designs that showcase a high degree of creativity and practicality. It recognizes the dedication and skill of designers who produce work that stands out for its thoughtful development and innovative use of materials and technology. These designs are acknowledged for their professional execution and potential to influence industry standards positively. Winning this award highlights the designer's ability to blend form and function effectively, offering solutions that enhance people's lives and wellbeing.
About Humpback Whale Song Conceptual Fashion Design
The collection is inspired by, the humpback whales and their songs. The idea of the project started to develop during and after a deadly injury that happened to the designer of the project. she sought help from a sound engineer friend of hers, to extract the sound spectrum of the humpback whale song. The process was followed by the design of a new graphical pattern with reference to the main sound spectrogram. Due to the cubic form and pixelated nature of the final pattern, she travelled to city of Yazd home of ikat in Iran to create her very own handmade fabric.
About Maryam Yazdanpanah
I am an interdisciplinary artist and fashion designer, and the founder of SAAKU, a label I established in 2016. My path spans both creative and academic disciplines. I hold a Master of Science from RMIT University in Melbourne and an MFA in Fashion Design and Society from Parsons School of Design, where I received a merit-based scholarship. My practice merges conceptual design, textile craftsmanship, and narrative thinking. Clothing for me is never just garment construction, but a medium through which emotional depth, personal mythology, and lived experience take form.
Award Record
Maryam Yazdanpanah is a winner of 1 A' Design Award, including this recognition.
About the A' Fashion, Apparel and Garment Design Award
The A' Fashion Design Award is an international fashion design competition recognizing good fashion designs by best fashion designers and brands worldwide. It is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to fashion designers, apparel designers, garment designers and textile designers from all countries. Typical entries include runway collections, dresses, suits, skirts, outerwear and jackets. The awarded fashion designs are published at https://designers.org/design-category/fashion
About A' Design Award & Competition
Organized annually since 2008, A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The philanthropic mission of the A' Design Award is to advance society through good design, by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Nominations are peer reviewed and evaluated anonymously by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. Eligible laureates receive the A' Design Prize, which includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, uploading a work and receiving a preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. More information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://designers.org/133530
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/133530
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!133530
- Laureate Profile: https://designers.org/d/321152
- Further Information from the Laureate: http://rb.gy/c0o9qf
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Humpback Whale Song Conceptual Fashion Design
- Function
- Conceptual Fashion Design
- Category
- Fashion, Apparel and Garment Design
- Discipline
- Fashion Design
- Industry
- Fashion
- Colors
- Black, Midnight Blue, Dark Slate Blue and Dark Slate Gray
- Images
- 5
- Client
- Saaku
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Maryam Yazdanpanah
- Country
- United States of America
- Recognition
- Bronze A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2021 - 2022
- Design ID
- #133530
Credits
- Image Credits
- Copyright by Maryam yazdanpanah, Photographer, Alireza davvari / Models, Mehdi film and farina akbari, 2021
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- The pattern for the fabric of the collection is rich in concept, dazzling in idea, noticeably communicative and illustrative. The designer wanted to acknowledge the importance of the whales in our ecosystem, for their role of producing large amounts of oxygen for our planet, as well as to highlight the inspiring characteristics of them. Each of the garments of this collection carries a part of the main sound waves, which resembles the echoes of the humpback whale song in the oceans while migrating.
- Inspiration
- The collection is inspired by the remarkably intelligent humpback whales, their complex acoustic vocalization, incredible social institutions and their language ability, which gives these sea creatures, the potential to communicate from north pole to south pole, with very low frequency sound waves. Especially the songs they sing during their 68500 km of migration. Their song consists of sounds that form a pattern and the repetition of the pattern makes a theme and then a song.
- Research
- The idea of the collection started to develop during and after a lethal injury that happened to the designer. Within unconsciousness, pain and relapse, having a sort of chain like visions about humpback whales started to draw her attention to these beautiful creatures and contemplating about them. They are one of the most undiscovered creatures on our planet to date, the characteristics of these mammals, their vocalization, the tough and challenging journey they go through and their intellectual abilities to communicate with each other intrigued her so much that the idea of designing a fabric with a message came into her mind.
- Challenge
- The project took place during the corona virus pandemic, when for the purpose of weaving the fabric, we had to safely travel to the desert city of Yazd in the middle of a hot summer, with restrictions and high risks involved. We had to spend more than ten hours a day, double masked with poor air conditioning in a 34 degrees warehouse which was at times unbearable. The work started to get tougher when it came down to the implementation of the pattern on the fabric, considering that the real life size of the long woven fabric was about 50 meters.
- Realization and Technology
- Due to the cubic form and pixelated nature of the final pattern, the designer, further decided to use the traditional weaving method of ikat. To ensure the authenticity of the craft, she traveled to the city of Yazd, and with the help of one of the great masters of ikat craft, the process started. The craft of ikat is through applying the designed pattern on bundles of yarns, calculating the gaps, numbering the bundles, choosing the color for the pattern, dying the yarns, warping threads, attaching the head of the yarn into tail of the previous threads on the loom and finally weaving the fabric.
- Operation and Interaction
- The fabric of the collection is fully handmade, animal cruelty free materials for the yarn and threads had been chosen to weave by the hands of ikat masters in Iran. The pieces can be worn day to night due to their statement design characteristics and the shades of colors used are neutral and easy to match with other pieces. The items are super lightweight and give a relaxed sensation to their wearer having in mind to give the calming sense of water flowing, just like how the garments flow over the body.
- Project Duration and Location
- The project started in March 2021 in Tehran and finished in July 2021 in Yazd, and was exhibited online in Tehran in August 2021.
- Specifications
- The collection consists of twelve looks, oversized coats and jackets, pleated trousers, summer shorts, short sleeve summer sun dress, long sleeve jumpsuit, genderless shirts, long sleeve shirt. Fabric of the collection is a handmade traditional ikat of Iran embellished with the pattern of humpback whale song, woven in city of Yazd, Iran. sizes are, small, medium and large
- Keywords
- Fashion, Fashion design, Conceptual fashion design, Ethical fashion, Humpback whale song, Art and science
