Research In Motion, the company behind the BlackBerry product line, teamed up with SoFA (School of Fashion and the Arts) for a design challenge. Students were to creatively fuse technology and fashion into holster designs that would carry BlackBerry’s newest smartphone, the BlackBerry Torch 9800. The design challenge revolved around the catch phrase “Best of both worlds.”
Creating a design with today’s multitasking women as her muse, Chamcham Gumin, 21, created the “Reversible Holster”—delicate and very feminine design on one side, and an ultra chic bold black fabric with studded safety lock on the other.
“The ‘best of both worlds’ fashion-wise is comfort and style in one,” said Gumin of her design. Engineered to be functional and stylish, she used synthetic fiber and foam to make the holster waterproof, and at the same time helping to cushion the phone. It won the People’s Choice Category, garnering most of the votes online.
Danika Rio Navarro, 22, interpreted “Best of both worlds” by combining contrasting elements to create an inspired design that is adaptable, functional and compact.
According to Navarro, her idea was to recognize the beauty in opposites—mixing black with white, stitching left with right, combining hand-drawn design with digital design, merging creativity with logic, fusing both linear and experimental. It mirrored the latest BlackBerry design that has both touch and qwerty keypad features.
Navarro’s holster design, entitled “Act on Inspiration,” won BlackBerry and SoFa’s choice category. It was ajudged as stylized, confident, playful and functional.
Fashion’s future
The competition’s judges were esteemed names in Philippine fashion. Amina Aranaz-Alunan, founder of SoFa and proprietor of Aranaz bags, and Brian Tenorio, renowned shoe designer, were both optimistic about the Philippine fashion and design industry’s future.
“I think it’s a very exciting time in Philippine design because these really are the young people who can change the landscape of Philippine fashion,” says Aranaz-Alunan.
Aranaz-Alunan and Tenorio lent their expertise in meticulously selecting holster designs that embodied the daring and fun characteristics of today’s designing youth.
“From the entries we got, we actually saw how creative the upcoming young designers are,” says Benjamin Thomas, Blackberry’s PR specialist.
With Brian Tenorio as their usher, the winning designers were given the special privilege of getting a sneak peek at what goes on behind the scenes in the design industry. They were toured around different factories and materials suppliers in Tenorio’s hometown, Marikina.
