Kirksey Wins Best in Show at IIDA Product Runway

04/25/2016 | Kirksey

Rubber flooring and seating textiles were carefully hand-stitched together to create this year’s Best in Show winner for the annual IIDA Product Runway fashion show, held at the Revention Music Center on Friday, April 22. Coming together to raise money for a good cause, Houston’s architecture and interior design professionals create fashion from everyday industry materials for artistic runway pieces that help raise funds for the Houston Furniture Bank, a non-profit organization that provides furniture and home goods for families in need.

Kirksey Architecture took home Best in Show for their take on this year’s “Avant Art” theme. The Kirksey team was assigned Modernism with Georgia O’Keefe as the inspiration artist for their category, and created a colorful dress, reminiscent of the painter’s abstraction of flowers.

“We started with an original sketch and worked more than 150 man-hours around-the-clock in just three weeks to create the dress,” said Laura Vargas, a member of Kirksey’s Science & Technology team. “We are so proud of our entire team – it was definitely a group project.”

The dress, weighing in at 50 pounds, was created using over 800 rubber tiles donated by Expanko rubber flooring that were individually hand-cut and hand-sewn. The fabric, provided by Humanscale, was originally white vinyl, but was hand-dyed to achieve the exact, desired color.

The collar of the dress was made entirely of rubber flooring and lined with 6-gauge copper wire to provide structure and form. More than 120 triangles had to be cut and sewn to create the blue cone shapes on the skirt of the dress.

“We are so lucky that Kirksey is committed to design in such a way that we’re able to give back to the community and contribute our design efforts for a good cause,” said Michelle Old, a member of Kirksey’s design team.