In engineering and in fashion, the key to success is found in human-centered design. These disparate disciplines overlapped in a wonderful way when a group of mostly mechanical engineering students-with little or no sewing experience-took on an extraordinary challenge. They created a garment for a highly acclaimed artist to wear in one of the most prestigious art festivals in the world, La Biennale in Venice, Italy.
It all happened within the creative realm of the Wond'ry, Vanderbilt's Innovation Center and the Wearable Product Design course led by adjunct instructor Alexandra Sargent Capps.
María Magdalena Campos-Pons, MacArthur Fellow and Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Fine Arts, and her creative partner and husband, Kamaal Malak, artist-in-residence of culture, advocacy and leadership, reached out to Capps with an amazing opportunity for the class.
"Magda and Kamaal wanted to find ways to celebrate students and elevate the arts at Vanderbilt. Since I'm teaching a design course that includes making wearable product prototypes, they asked if we would make a garment for Magda to wear to lead an artists' parade," Capps said.
"This was a crazy and amazing opportunity to dress a famous artist, and we had to go for it." -Alexandra Sargent Capps
COLLABORATIVE VISION
Campos-Pons visited the class with her inspiration: images of elaborate Egúngún masquerade costumes from the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria.
"From the very beginning, I invited the students to create idiosyncratic pieces from Nashville to be shared in Venice," Campos-Pons said. "I gave the students freedom and opportunity to tell their own histories of ancestral lineages and cultural care."
Each student in the class created intricate quilt-like squares using mostly upcycled materials, with symbols representing Campos-Pons, Vanderbilt, Nashville and the students themselves. This involved learning techniques in hand sewing, beading and embroidery.
"In engineering, there are strict parameters students are used to working in, so I had to push them out of their comfort zones," said Capps, who has taught costume design, sustainable fashion and fashion history and managed the costume shop for Vanderbilt Theatre. "I really encouraged them to be bold and experiment."
"The theme of this year's Venice Biennale is 'radical love,' and it guided every decision, from the selection of imagery to the choice of material to the hands that made each piece," said Rowan Baird, who is in Owen's Class of 2027.
"This garment is a collective act. It is what love looks like when it is made by many." -Rowan Baird
ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME EXPERIENCE
Marion Hagstrom, a Ph.D. student in the wearable robotics design lab of Professor Michael Goldfarb, audited the class as a creative outlet. She used to mend her father's farming clothes but had no sewing experience beyond that.
Her passion for the project led to an invitation from Campos-Pons to travel to the Venice Biennale to help with final fittings of the garment.
"Magda was so generous telling everyone the origin of her outfit and how it was made by students. There was a lot of intricate beading, and Magda was doing all these big twirls and motions during the parade. It looked so good, but I was praying nothing would fly off," Hagstrom said, laughing.
"Something Alex always says is a garment has to have both form and function, and Magda did that by giving the robe life." -Marion Hagstrom
Hagstrom jumped in as a stage assistant for Campos-Pons, and she's carrying this experience into her prosthetic limb research.
"I'm working on a prosthetic knee that can move backwards, as well as more affordable prosthetic knees for smaller-statured people. Since I've come back from Venice, my main goal has been to make the exterior more aesthetically appealing to users, because aesthetics matter a lot. I'm prioritizing form and function," Hagstrom said.
DARE TO GROW… AND SEW
Beyond the work the students did, Capps said she was impressed by the emotion they put into this challenging project, as well as into a secondary project where students created dexterity aprons for patients recovering from hand surgeries at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
"These engineering students took this special topics class and put a lot of feeling into both collaborative pieces," she said. "Now they're artists with their work displayed at the Venice Biennale, and their work is being used at VUMC. I am amazed by how much the students embraced and learned from the process and product."
Campos-Pons was thrilled with the final product and the hands-on support.
"This was a true testimony of the scope and purpose of a Vanderbilt education," Campos-Pons said. "Expanding and strengthening students' professional development with impacting, real-world experiences. Dare to grow is our mission, and we fulfill the vision it promises."
