How A Team of Chatham IAR Students Won a Fashion Show
Vanessa Mleczko ’27 strikes a pose in the dress which won her team first place at the IIDA Fashion Meets Finish show. (Bennett Spencer)
When Vanessa Mleczko ’27 tried on the dress her classmates designed for a professional fashion show, she was worried she’d screw it up.
“I was scared I was going to rip something, or it was going to fall,” she said. “But it was all good. I just had to walk down the runway, and that was all that mattered.”
Nothing tore nor fell, and Mleczko and her team went on to win first place in the International Interior Design Association’s (IIDA) Fashion Meets Finish show.
The IIDA’s regional chapter—which includes members from Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey—hosts the fashion show, where design teams are paired with material manufacturers to create a garment from unconventional materials. Many of the teams are made up of professional interior designers. Chatham sent two teams of students.
Mleczko’s team had to use wall coverings from Koroseal, with help from the company’s Amy Rizzo, to design the dress she wore. “It’s not like fabric,” said Mleczko, who helped create the dress in addition to modeling it. “It does not move like fabric. It is not light. It definitely helps that I hit the gym, but it was heavy and very hard to work with.”
From left: Sage Baltimore ’25, Bennett Spencer ’25, Vanessa Mleczko ’27, Stella Barker ’25, and Maddy Cisco ’25, and Amy Rizzo (Bennett Spencer)
Bennett Spencer ’25 was also on Mleczko’s team. To make the dress, they first determined themes and motifs they wanted to be incorporated into the garment, Spencer said.
“We had different meetings where we were starting to conceptualize what we wanted to do,” Spencer said. They were inspired by the flowers after looking at Dutch painter Jan Weenix’s “Flowers on a Fountain with a Peacock.”
Her teammates did sketches of the dress’s shape after taking inspiration from a number of other images the group assembled. “We all had our hands in a lot of different areas of the project,” Spencer said. “I made some of the flowers and ruffles on the dress. I also worked on the poster for the event, and I did a little bit of sewing on my sewing machine as well.”
Once they had Mleczko’s measurements, the team went about using wallcovering panels for the dress’s bust, while the ruffles placed over a shaped skeleton to create the skirt.
They were making finishing touches up until the final hours before the show. “We were the first team there, because we were still working on the dress,” Spencer said with a chuckle.
Everything on the dress, save for some ribbons, rivets, and zip ties—rising to the challenge of the day, they used no fabric.
“There were a lot of people, and there was a whole runway,” said Mleczko. “It was a little nerve wracking. I was backstage, I was getting nervous. But I was like, it’s not like I do this every day. I just want to enjoy it and be in the moment.”
The best part of the experience, she said, was meeting all her teammates, most of
“The girls on my team yelling once I was on the stage was onstage was really helpful and supportive,” said Mleczko. “Us winning it was just the cherry on top, because there were so many creative and beautiful pieces there. We did not expect to win.”
Learn more about Chatham’s interior architecture programs, which include undergraduate and master’s degrees.