Outstanding seating
Student fashion designers create winning chair fabric patterns
Art Van furniture franchisee Taylor Lee has honored three Central Michigan University fashion merchandising and design students as winners of a textile print competition.
During the spring semester, CMU students in faculty member Su Kyoung An's Digital Technologies and Craftsmanship for Apparel Design course designed textile prints and digitally printed the designs on fabric to create slip covers for 10 Art Van chairs that Lee provided.
The chairs were displayed in the Bovee University Center for a time before the March closure of campus to allow the CMU community to vote on favorites, and Lee also featured them and gathered votes on Art Van's Facebook page.
Lee is donating the designers' chairs to be auctioned in community groups' fundraising efforts.
Winners of the competition, all from Michigan, are:
- Deana Lalonde, of Sault Ste. Marie, first place and $500. Lalonde, an accelerated senior/graduate student, plans to pursue a fashion industry career as an apparel designer.
- Joshua Golden, of Lansing, second place and $300. Golden is a senior working this summer as a global apparel technical development intern with Nike.
- Emily Doyle, of Saginaw, third place and $100. Doyle is a graduate student in apparel product development and merchandising technologies.