Fashion Design Major Turns Dresses Into Wearable Art Forms

Photo: Eimee Diaz Rueda (second from right) with Dominican University Fashion Show models (from left) Evelina Podkowa, Mia Hitterman, Madison Creamer and Sidney Robinson. The models are wearing Diaz Rueda’s designs inspired by nature, including blue coral.

There’s one thing to know about a dress decorated in freshly cut flowers: It’s a one-time wear kind of garment.

But art can be like that. And for Eimee Diaz Rueda, designing “non-practical” fashion is one of her passions.

The 2022 Dominican University graduate, who earned a degree in fashion design, is creating a dress with floral arrangements for the 2022 Street Fashion Flower Show on June 18. The online event helps to promote Southside Blooms, a nonprofit, sustainable florist in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood that creates jobs in the floral industry for at-risk youth. Southside Blooms is a project of Chicago Eco House, which has turned vacant lots in Englewood to urban farms, providing employment for residents of the area. 

“It’s to bring more awareness to Southside Blooms,” Diaz Rueda explained. “They are trying to get the word out about how they can reduce stereotyping on the South Side and they are really trying to grow how they teach young people about sustainability and urban farming.”

The asymmetrical pink dress that Diaz Rueda is creating will contain three to four different types of flowers covering roughly 80 percent of the garment. To make sure the flowers are fresh for the show, they will be attached to the dress with a hot glue gun the day before the event, Diaz Rueda said.

Incorporating natural elements into her work is something Diaz Rueda enjoys. For her senior fashion project at Dominican, she designed a collection of dresses inspired by ocean coral, plants, flowers and the sun.

During Dominican’s Spring Fashion Show in April, Diaz Rueda won the Best Senior Designer Award for her nature-inspired designs, which she describes as “wearable art” and “sculptural fashion.”

This collection was made possible through an Excellence in Experiential Learning (ExcEL) Scholar Award from Dominican University. Funding from the scholarship helped to pay for fabric, decoration, sewing books and accessories for the women who modeled Diaz Rueda’s designs in the fashion show.

“Coming from a world where people see fashion practically, I purpose fashion as a form of expression for me to bring pleasure to the eye,” she wrote in her ExcEL application.

Diaz Rueda credits Dominican fashion instructor McKinley Johnson and his background in theater costume design with inspiring her to venture into the world of wearable art.

“He was a huge help in making me not be afraid of approaching something that was non-practical,” she said.

As for her future in fashion design, Diaz Rueda doesn’t discount producing wearable clothing, but creating art through fashion will always be her interest, she says.

“I think it’s important to know the practicality of making wearable clothing,” she said. “Right now, I’m focused on knowing how to make practical clothing, but in the future I would like to be able to lean toward something in the arts. I would really like to stay with the wearable art approach.”