INSPIRATION FOR THE LINE
In designing the collection, Seth Aaron draws on his passion for a domestically manufactured solar solution to pressing energy, environmental and economic challenges facing the country and his interest in exploring the technology's aesthetic possibilities. Below are a few posts of inspiration leading up to the show.
I go back a long way with solar power. I remember solar energy being used by tubes for heating swimming pools in California. Now my kids are interested. This fall, my family is moving. We’re planning to install a SolarWorld array on our new roof, of course. My kids – I have a 12-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy – think it’s really cool what I’m doing. They’re very interested. They know more about this environmental stuff than I do. Of course, they know it’s all about their future.
You could say the first design in my solar runway collection is a little editorial black dress. It embodies my particular impression of SolarWorld's new black module. This design also fits into a certain look that has become my signature: It's innovative, edgy, sophisticated, modern. Overall, the designs also will echo SolarWorld's manufacturing. Both are impressive in a straightforward way, featuring high-tech materials. The designs are streamlined, structured, finished and fitted.
As far as I know, no one has designed a high-fashion runway collection based on solar. Those solar designs that have shown up in finished fashion have directly borrowed or even applied the technology. I'm interested in leading a high-fashion interpretation of this powerful source of future energy. I'm taking inspiration from the technology but not mimicking it. I like to be the leader. So does SolarWorld. We're both leaders in our fields.
When I toured the SolarWorld factory, I was looking to build on my ideas for a solar-inspired runway collection. As I wandered, I picked up this product here, touched that material there, took a photo of a pattern, looked inside a furnace. Everywhere, I found spaces that looked graphic, rigid, metal. For my designs, I didn't so much form ideas as gut impressions. My interpretations are futuristic, exaggerated and dramatic. I want people to remember them. After all, solar is our future.