How to Make a Runway Set

An inside look from the lens of our artist in residence Rae. How it comes together, the mishaps along the way, and the good if you let the process play out.

The Creative Ideation process is like a Dinner Party

And as some dinner parties often go, they come about with very little lead-time. A jolt of energy hits and suddenly there is a date on the calendar that gleans both stress and excitement. Boom: September 6th. Chelsea. Two courses. Two weeks to prepare.

But in this case, the jolt of energy stems from images of Tibi’s Spring 2025 collection. The date is New York Fashion Week. Location: Chelsea. 500 guests. I have six weeks to design two different sets! One is for the actual runway, where our guests will be seated, And another for the back-of-house, where we’ll shoot compelling visuals before our models hit the runway. Oh yeah, I haven’t yet mentioned, I’ve never designed a runway set before and I’m not sure if Amy knew this before she hired me.

I start by thinking …How do we want our guests to feel? How do we want the collection to speak? How will we convey something memorable, and aesthetically, in a short window of time? And how am I going to pull this off??

When a creative process is initiated - in this case set design for fashion week - it feels as if I’m inviting every single idea I’ve had mentally marinating to a last-minute dinner party. Every acquaintance - every art direction concept I’ve been wanting to implement somewhere - gets an invitation.

Once all of the ideas have arrived, I stare at each one across the imaginary table and try to figure out if they are an old friend or new, how long I’ll entertain them, if I’ll like them by the end of the party, and why some even got an invite in the first place. I sit with some ideas for a while, though many get kicked out immediately. Time passes, and I’m relieved when the rest of the Tibi creative team comes to the table and is ready to free me from my hostess duties. The creatives on our team are my confidantes, so together we sift through the good ideas from the bad, tearing ideas apart and globing pieces together into something better. One of my ideas everyone loved was to build wrapped columns for the front of house runway. Sarah, our brand director, invited a last-minute plus-one, which was also a hit: white clouds suspended from the ceiling. Dinner party successful. Now it’s time to get to work.

The Runway: Four Wrapped Columns

It was the original sketch from Amy’s notebook of one of Traci’s amazing designs that got my wheels turning with the concept of wrapping and unfolding:

As a sculptor, the most nerve racking part of making art is finding ways to safely transport the finished pieces. Given that it is quite literally a bane of my life, it’s ironic that I have always been incredibly drawn to visuals that involve the wrapping and protection of art. Museum boxes, soft padding pulled taut with bungee cords, and white sheets with plastic covering priceless art. This utilitarian way of hiding precious objects in common materials such as cotton, canvas, rope, and wood somehow becomes romantic, possibly because archival work is so honorable.

Above: Museum archives

Handle with Care, 2018. Tim Walker

The work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who famously wrapped Arc de Triomphe in 2021, and Andres Reisinger, whose works artfully drape renown cities in color, are always stewing in my mind. It felt right to bring these references into the Tibi universe because Amy and Traci are essentially trusting the world to handle their art, physically and conceptually. They’re handing it to the public and trusting that it will be unwrapped, understood, and cherished.

Every fashion collection holds hidden meanings and experiences just as wrapped columns hint that what’s behind the drapery is an object or artifact of value. And before each collection arrives on the runway, it’s our job at Tibi to help the work thrive and to protect it until it is unveiled to the world.

Okay, so maybe we can’t drape New York City, but we could create draped figures, figures that would be purposely amorphous. I wanted it to be difficult for anyone to guess what hid underneath, eliciting that excitement of not knowing what was going to come down the runway. I kept returning to images of Henry Moore’s upright motifs covered in white sheets. Not the sculptures themselves, but the images of them covered. A haunting and fascinating angle of artwork that even Henry couldn’t ignore and I had never seen another artist draw their works covered before. Isn’t that intriguing? I wanted the figures to be absolutely gigantic, but unfortunately freight elevators are rarely over 8ft tall - something I learned mere weeks before runway, to my delight! Read sarcasm here, please!. So I worked within the constraints, and was able to evoke the looming effect I wanted, allowing the objects to project their presence in history without a pinpoint to where in the timeline they reside. The result was something incredibly contemporary and yet familiar. The draping concept even made its way into the runway invitation.

My brain never shuts off. I think this is the case with all of the Tibi creative team. I remember - in the lead-up to runway - at night my eyes would be closed, but I was drawing shapes in my head or trying to remember how much wire mesh was left in the studio. This was my first sketch:

Above, when I had initially considered wrapping the bare columns in the venue, this is how I imagined doing that. Below is me touring the space and getting a sense of the space. I remember thinking: holy fuck. Life is so great. What an incredible opportunity to show what I can do.

What did we build these gigantic sculptures with? I’ll tell you. Every single bloody scrap or would-be trash we could find at the Tibi atelier. If anyone has a starving artist mentality in the office, it’s me. Mainly because I love to see things transform, but also because art materials are expensive. I think I would have been a great hunter. I love being resourceful. I would have found a way to use every part of my kill. I also hate the idea of producing more needless waste when being resourceful is far more efficient. Anyway, EBay, NextDoor, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist are all easy ways to not feel guilty while making art.

Hitting a Car (Twice)

I drove a U-Haul without our CEO’s permission to New Jersey to pick up a truckload of foam that was going to be thrown away by an upholstery company.

I also drove to the Bronx to pick up even more foam from two guys who were refitting their recording studio and replacing the sound reducing foam on the walls. When I finally stopped for some lunch I - of course - hit a truck. The truck was full of electricians who couldn’t have cared less that I had hit their company car. Regardless, I panicked. I texted my work husband Derek, our Director of Media. Dereck, FUCK I HIT A CAR. I drove in circles downtown trying to find overnight parking, and when FUCK again, backing out of a parking lot that turns out prohibits work vehicles, I backed into a chic black Mercedes SUV with a suit-wearing driver. He wasn’t as chill as the aforementioned electric guys. I cried. Stella and Elaine came to the rescue. The rest is history. The runway set looked incredible. Three assistants had to help me with the columns and I believe our vision came across. I gushed all about the post-show emotions on Instagram.

The work in progress….

The final outcome….

Second Set: CLOUDS

You guys see the runway, but behind the scenes we’re also shooting the models in an interesting way that is viscerally connected to the idea of the collection. A second, editorial set consisting of floating clouds that came from our brand director Sarah’s head was immediately beloved by everyone on the team. So I got to work doing sketches.

Three clouds. In three different shapes. Perfect for spring. Clean, emotive, playful, tonal in all white.

The cloud innards were once again, you guessed it, made entirely of recycled scraps lying around the Tibi office. This time, however, we wrapped what would have been sent to the recycling bin in a fine metal mesh.

It took pounds of plaster and countless rounds of sanding to finesse the shapes into what we wanted without adding more weight to the clouds, which would need to be safely suspended above our models. Initially, I wanted to construct the clouds out of papier mache. Sounds pretty straight forward, right? That’s cute, but no. I approached the making of papier mache substance as I approach any kitchen recipe: with total disregard. So I thought to myself: This recipe calls for salt?! Okay. Well, I don’t have salt. So we won’t use salt.

This, not so shockingly, backfired.

After just a few days (and during one of New York City’s hottest summers) the smell of the flour-water paste was actually unbearable. Zana, an art assistant we had hired, made it her goal to rip off anything that was beginning to resemble dough. I remember one day when Amy came over to my workspace to review the process and said “um… does something smell like vomit?” and I just casually said “yep, that’s one of the clouds! I’ll figure it out tho!!” And she just nodded and we carried on another discussion. Ha! The outcome? Judge for yourself.

S’25 BTS | by @gabesmilovic

We basically took over every square inch of the Tibi atelier for a month. It was absolute madness. I found some Fragile stickers and wore them as a bra on the outside of my dirty tee, as if to say: “I’m running on fumes. If you speak to me I might not string together any words!!! ” To my surprise, no one batted an eye. Working in fashion is fun.

I’m not sure how to close out this article because it’s funny, once a project is over I sort of forget it ever happened until the work sees the light of day when the collection goes live. Writing this, I feel a second-wind sense of pride for the work we all did together and that’s what keeps me inspired as we set out on our next big creative endeavor. Yesterday was clouds and columns, today it is snow and door knockers (you’ll see.), but tomorrow could be absolutely anything. We just keep our eyes open for inspiration and keep our through line strong.

You can view the whole collection here, if you’d like to see:

Tibi Spring 2025