The parachute dress was a new thought entirely. Working with the fabric, which she ordered online from a parachute shop, the material reminded the 27-year-old Asheville designer of the skeleton of a dress—its inner workings, its barest stitched structure. “I thought of the architecture of a dress, something wearable that you could see without being blinded by colors and patterns,” she says. 

White created the dress after being chosen as a fashion “groundbreaker,” one of four up-and-coming designers who participated in HATCHfest Asheville, a four-day creative festival held in downtown Asheville in mid-April. The festival, which included groundbreakers in six other disciplines—architecture, journalism, design and technology, music, photography and film—began in Bozeman, Montana, in 2004. Last fall the fashion designer R. Brooke Priddy of West Asheville’s Ship to Shore traveled to Bozeman as something of an ambassador for our fair city, and this spring was the first time HATCH has been held anywhere except Bozeman. By all accounts, the inaugural Asheville fest was a smash hit, and organizers plan to bring the event back next year. 

While the parachute dress seemed to embody the groundbreaking nature of the festival, there were other equally impressive displays of creative and artistic talent in the fashion discipline, and indeed, all over town. (Full disclosure: As VERVE’s editor, I participated in the HATCH journalism events, and VERVE was a sponsor of the fashion programming.) Kelledy Francis, an Orlando fashion designer who spent five years in Asheville and got an MFA from Western Carolina University, showed off a breathtaking, theatrical peacock of a dress called Summer, made primarily of bed sheets and house paint. George Baxter, whose great uncle is the prolific Kentucky poet and critic Wendell Berry, displayed his hand-painted Nike sneakers and tailored hoodies, which had a decidedly hip-hop vibe. Fashion groundbreaker Joti Marra, an Asheville clothing and jewelry designer who studied at New York City’s Fashion Institute of Technology, wants to someday create her own clothing line but admits that, in the meantime, she already has something of a dream job, as an assistant buyer for Minx boutiques in Asheville. The HATCH festival’s tagline was, “Be inspired,” and a post-festival posting on Marra’s blog summed things up: “I am insanely inspired by my Asheville peers at the moment,” she wrote. Asheville-area artists whip up their own ambitious, oddball creations year round, whether they’re made of parachute material or not. But the festival certainly seemed to give local creative types a lift.  —Jess McCuan