The Cooper-Hewitt, an affiliate of the Smithsonian, held this event a number of months ago with well known designers as part of a larger exhibit. It is 1 hour, 2 minutes in length.
Washington Post Style Editor Robin Givhan, leads a conversation with past National Design Award Winners Francisco Costa (Women’s Creative Director of Calvin Klein Collection), Yeohlee Teng, and Maria Cornejo about their work and the role of fashion in contemporary culture. Their designs are featured in Design USA: Contemporary Innovation.
The craft section of Design USA features such sections as one on Yeohlee Tang (see above as one of the National Design winners in conversation and a favorite of ours as a designer for all ages), Aveda Corporation, Ralph Rucci and Nike:
“Craft — the practice of making things — has enjoyed a resurgence in design since the late 1990s. This stems from our desire for unique works, nostalgia for objects that reflect the natural world, and appreciation of the sense of the hand, in contrast to the pervasive precision of mass-produced goods. But it is also largely due to changing cultural perspectives. Recent advances in technology have allowed designers to experiment using new, exciting materials. Not long ago, the making of craft conformed to well-established traditions, and was considered distinct from the creation of design. Today, the difference is not as simple. Techniques and methods usually associated with craft are being used by designers to expand the boundaries of design. Similarly, many contemporary fabrication and distribution practices in design have been adopted in the domain of craft.”
“The works selected for this section illustrate what craft represents — the attention to detail, the exquisite construction, the unique perspective of the maker. Ralph Rucci’s garments require up to six months of painstaking labor; Nike’s Zoom Victory Spike looks like a piece of infra-structure while evoking the humble embroidery machine that sews it together; autobiography has played an intimate role in the graphic work of Stefan Sagmeister.”
On July 22, First Lady Michelle Obama participated in Honoring the Designers of Today and Inspiring the Designers of the Future; the following text is from the White House Blog posted by
The day began with a Teen Design Fair at the Smithsonian American Art Renwick Gallery, where DC high school students met one-on-one with leading designers in the fields of fashion, industrial design, architecture, multimedia and graphic design, including Jenna Lyons of J.Crew, Maira Kalman, Smart Design and Stephen Doyle. To close out the morning, an inspiring Q&A was held with Tim Gunn and Caroline Payson, Cooper-Hewitt’s Education Director, about the value of design education. Tim talked about how it took him time to find his design path and said that “there was no magic sauce to become a designer; it requires hard work and experience.”
Following the Teen Design Fair, the award winners and finalists attended a special luncheon at the White House, hosted by the First Lady. It was a very festive event and the setting reinforced the tremendous amount of design talent that exists in this country. Mrs. Obama’s speech emphasized the importance of design and arts education, and celebrated the value of the work of the award winners. Wayne Clough, the Secretary of the Smithsonian, introduced the National Design Award program and thanked the sponsors, and I showed slides of the winners and their work, naming both finalists and winners, you can see them here. I was lucky enough to sit next to the First Lady for lunch, so we talked about expanding the opportunities for high-schoolers to study design and develop their creative talents. Tim Gunn was sitting on her other side, so he was able to tell her a lot about learning the art of fashion design.
First Lady Michelle Obama talks with Timothy Gunn during a luncheon honoring the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s National Design Award recipients in the East Room of the White House. July 21, 2010.
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