Up Close & Personal CHW Neri Bloomfield Academy of Design - Bar Elboim

From The Summer Bauhaus Trends to Tik To k: We’ve All Been Wa iting For !

Fashion Design students at the CHW Neri Bloomfield Academy of Design drew new inspiration from the iconic Bauhaus movement, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.

In true ‘COVID-style,’ students showcased their final ‘mix and match’ collections over Zoom, following a memorable academic year of distance learning and lock downs.

It’s a dramatic shift from the elaborate fashion shows hosted on campus at the end of each year. However, the virtual presentations did not disappoint: they exuded the creativity, tenacity, and flare of each aspiring young designer!

Kicking off the inaugural “Marathon month of back-to-back Zoom presentations” was Merav Lavie, Head of the Fashion Department, and a proud graduate of the program herself. Merav noted, “The 2020 academic year has been one of the most challenging years for our students. Yet, we’ve also seen how ready they are to re-imagine and reshape the fashion industry, like never before!”

Bar Elboim was among the first of many talented students to present her collection to a guest panel of senior lecturers and designers. Drawing her inspiration from the abstract artist, Wassily Kandinsky, Bar expressed, “I feel like I collaborated with Kandinsky throughout the entire creative process!”

Her inspiration board, geometric patterns and primary color block echo the famous artist’s design philosophy, where “opposites and contradictions” come together to create true “harmony.”

Bar Elboim’s conceptual design for an urban backpack

Bar Elboim modelling a shirt she designed inspired by the Bauhaus Movement

Using her tech-savvy skills, Bar chose to digitally sketch her fashion designs using Adobe Illustrator and showcase the evolution of her collection on an Instagram account titled: ‘My Kandinsky Bauhaus Shirt’.

Translating the classic Bauhaus style into a modern look required an out-of-the-box approach. Bar brilliantly showcased her final collection via Tik Tok, a social media platform that has attracted billions of young followers through punchy, 15-second micro-videos.

With limited access to design facilities and the closure of fabric stores, Bar had to re-think many of her original ideas. “It was a period of trial and error.

I had to constantly adapt as we continued to study and work from home. To achieve the final look I was aiming for, I had to actually draw directly on the fabrics, instead of sewing colorful inserts.”

Bar’s final presentation earned her welldeserved praise from the expert panel. Her fresh and fashionable summer collection couldn’t be timelier.

“I wanted to create pieces that made the person wearing them feel beautiful.” After weeks of lock down, Bar admits, “I never expected that I would actually model my own collection, but it definitely felt good!”

Upon a closer look, you can see the fine work that went into designing the material on the shirt from scratch

Featured on the front cover, this photograph of Bar Elboim at the beach features her beautifully designed bathing-suit cover-up

Bar Elboim’s digital art designed in Adobe Illustrator

Bar Elboim presenting her project over ZOOM as the CHW Neri Bloomfield Academy of Design now offers digital e-learning in the wake of COVID-19