Boston Fashion Week's Emerging Trends: Naomi Davidoff

           The next designer I met at BFW’s Emerging Trends press day was a young designer, who is launching her company to success, only months after graduation. Naomi Davidoff is a costume designer who has a way with fabrics and technique. She studied fiber with a concentration in experimental fashion at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Juggler - photo credit: Ron Davidoff

          Davidoff creates couture garments for performances and special events. “I am not only interested in fashion, but also wearable art, costume, and blurring the lines between the two and working with a lot of performers, dancers, circus artists, musicians, theater people, and actors,” she said.  

Madeline - photo credit: Ron Davidoff

          Part of her love for costume design is because of the people she works with. “They’re really half of what makes my work really special, I think, is working with them,” she said. She loves bringing her clients’ ideas to life. “That kind of leads me to want to work with different people and to want to make clothes for them and get inside their heads and think about who they are as personas and characters,” she said.

Siamese Twins - photo credit: Ron Davidoff

          Her most recent project is costume director for the Baltimore Rock Opera Society back home in Maryland. “We are a volunteer organization that’s a community theater and we are dedicated to making the most innovative, original, crazy rock opera you could ever imagine,” she said. For their last show, Murder Castle, the costumes were inspired by the Victorian era and The Chicago Worlds Fair. “They were experimenting with electricity and people putting that into garments,” she said. So she created glowing ballgowns with LEDs in the hoop skirts.

Mermaid - photo credit: Ron Davidoff

          Her collection this year, called “Phantasma,” is inspired by “surrealism, freakery and circus arts, and living nightmares.” She took a special interest in making a lot of the textiles in this collection. “So not only am I using found fabrics, I’m also using hand dyed, hand screen printed, over dyed, resisted fabrics, shibories, so experimenting with all different techniques,” she said.

Check out her SS13 collection video below!

Phantasma from Naomi Davidoff on Vimeo.

To see more about Davidoff and her collections, visit her website at www.naomidavidoff.com.