Elise Diebel
The international runways have taken a massive turn towards prints for the Spring season and no senior embraced this idea more than Diebel. I loved her choice of bright, bold florescence colors and mixing of prints. She brought to my mind the looks of designers Max Osterweis and Erin Beatty of Suno. Diebel was inspired by heartbeat monitors, 60's psychedelics, Jackson Pollock and the manipulation of geometric shapes among other things. The pieces were created through a combination of hand painting, hand dying and custom printed fabrics.
Ver Duin showed a great display of separates that any stylish guy would love to own. She drew inspiration from the Scottish Highlands and the forward-thinking young man's wardrobe. Watching each one of her looks came out, it reminded me more and more of the Burberry Prorsum menswear shows. In my mind, I find menswear to be one of the hardest things to design for. Designers are working within a confined number of silhouettes and colors-if they aren't not careful, they can go overboard really quickly. Kudos to Ver Duin on an amazing menswear collection!
His first line, adequately named Pawe-wa (meaning to dream or to have a vision) was inspired by Native American tribes as well as a recent trip to Africa as an intern with Global mamas in Ghana. The line presented beautiful options for all the bohemian "princesses" out there. A large part of Ruffalo's focus was to have a eco-friendly line, so pieces were made out of recycled coach leather, scrap fur, and vintage feathers paired with unbleached silk and muslin.
King drew inspiration from the bare human form and that's how the color story came about for this collection. No one loves the nude trend more than me! King did a wonderful job of creating a solid cohesive collection and took on the difficult trend of transparency. I say bravo to King for taking on a major Midwest faux pas and making it beautiful. I just love the zipper on the back of the top below. 
Leslie Randall
Randall showed great skill by being able to show her large range of capabilities as a designer. Showing a gown, cocktail and day dress, jacket and separates. All of which were really beautiful! Randall played the balance between retro and modern influences and used unique material and textures to amp up basic silhouettes.
And an added bonus to the night, I got to meet one of my favorite bloggers, Ellen Dahl of the Minneapoline. Because of that lovely meeting, I wound up being featured in the Star Tribune here.
I am really looking forward to hearing from the designers in the coming years. To read more about all the designers that showed their work, check out the Distortion site here.
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