Jewelry Made from Auto Parts & Paper Dress on Dateline Detroit

A few weeks ago, my friend and amazingly creative designer Matthew Richmond told me he was contacted by Channel 4 style editor Jon Jordan to make a dress out of automotive brochures for the lovely Ashlee Baracy, traffic reporter and former Miss Michigan to wear to the Auto Show Charity Preview. Then he asked me if I could make her jewelry out of auto parts. Of course my answer was yes (followed by a little squeal if you must know)! As you probably have already seen on my blog, Matt doesn't just design dresses using traditional materials. He makes his fashion sculptures out of recycled materials like paper, plastic, and even VHS tape.  They may be sculptures but they are in fact very wearable. Channel 4 came to his studio area to shoot us creating and talking about our work. We arranged for models to wear four of his dresses: two that he made out of my photographs, the VHS tape dress, and the stunningly beautiful ball gown made out of Kroger grocery bags. 

I received a box full of little car parts, most of which I had no idea what they even were. While Matt was making his amazing dress I started laying out different design ideas with them.  

One of the challenges of working with found, unknown items is you never know if they are going to solder together or not. It was a lot of experimentation. Translation: a whole lot of fun and little bit of frustration.

 One idea I had but the tire weights can be made of lead...probably not something you want against your skin...

 Shining up the parts.

 Making the bail out of sterling silver.

 Torching.

 The finished pieces!

A true "cuff!"

The Charity Preview was incredible! Everywhere Ashlee went people would swarm her to ask about the dress and touch it.  

Photo courtesy of The Detroit News

Photo by Andrew Potter

Getting interviewed. Photo courtesy of Channel 4.

 Lights, camera, action!

 Headlights from the car meet headlights from the dress.

 Jon Jordan shooting the photo he used in this article: http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/Ashlee-Baracy-s-dress-is-hit-at-Charity-Preview/-/1719418/8017292/-/mq5va2z/-/index.html

 Hanging out at the studios afterwards. So much fun!

 Hello Andrew Humphrey!

And if you haven't seen the segment on DATELINE DETROIT you can view it here:

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/Dateline-Detroit-Car-ture/-/1719418/8266792/-/lujnx5/-/index.html

Find my jewelry here:

Lilacpop and USTrendy

Photography here:

jannabissett.com

Facebook here:

Lilacpop Photography

And Matthew Richmond here:

Matt Richmond