The Big Dress is also a good example of how the Mercury’s chosen “installations+runway show” format can work very well. Rio Wren (R.A.W.) is first and foremost a textile artist. Wren’s Big Dress showcased these textiles in a hoop-supported skirt with tiers of ruffles. But before the fashion show when each designer had a display (installation) with live models (in many variations on a sitting room tableau mostly), there was someone on hand at R.A.W.’s display to show us a swatch book of the silks hand-dyed, hand-painted with vegetable dyes and with rust. All of this excellent info would be lost in a runway drive-by.
