Designer Hannah Shaw in her studio. — Photo by Mimi Luse

Working out of a tiny, meticulously organized atelier on Stanhope Street, fashion designer Hannah Shaw makes ethereal, one of a kind couture dresses with industrial twists to them. Taking her inspiration from heavy machinery and woodland sprites in equal parts, every one of her pieces strikes a balance of sleek structure and a lightness of being. Like a sci-fi toga party.

Folding and crocheting chiffon or silk organza, her dresses’ soft sculptural layers bring a formal gravitas to reduced shifts and cocktail dresses, recalling an exquisite Rodarte evening gown. But departing from the delicacy one would require such a dress to have, Shaw toughens her designs with materials like metals, wood, and house paint. "I find most of my inspiration, and much of my materials, at the hardware store, not necessarily the fabric store," she laughs.

	Hannah Shaw’s 2008 collection. Click for more.

Sometimes these elements only sample or reference these materials, as in a soft white organza shift blocked with pockets containing actual birch bark. In other instances, Shaw uses the found material as a starting point, and it informs the dresses structure.

For example, an A-line hoop dress of hers is anchored at the hem by a strip of wood grain.  In a sense, Hannah’s work is process-based. She will often pick a material or technique and let it guide her design. "I almost never execute a piece directly from a sketch, I will begin with the materials, and let them inspire me."

The day I visited her studio, Hannah had just finished a burgundy V-neck slip dress. From afar, it looked tie-died, but upon closer inspection the piece was mottled with ridges and texture, and what looked like, almost, burns. I asked about the origin of the fabric, and she told me the piece began as an accident.

"I was making a slip with this," she shows me a bolt of smooth burgundy silk organza. "And I was ironing out the seams. The phone rang, I think it was my mom… and I left the iron down." Shaw burnt the slip, but developed a new technique in the process.

Shaw’s radical approach to making garments is unusual in the fashion industry, but so is her background. She originally thought she was going to be a biologist, but while injecting Petri dishes during undergraduate years, visions of dresses kept distracting her. "I was working all day in the lab, but my mind was elsewhere, I kept on having these ideas for dresses, and I just decided to run with it."

She majored in studio art and made fashion design her senior thesis. She moved to New York in 2007 and her eponymous line is now in its fourth cycle. With her most recent A/W 2009 line her work is starting to hit its stride. More accessible than her previous experiments with clothing design, they are also more refined.

For the moment, sells her dresses in upscale boutiques in New York, at the online boutique for independent designers, Stars and The Infinite Darkness, and at the prestigious American Craft Council fairs, where she is listed as an emerging designer. A recent show in Baltimore landed her with a deluge of orders and a waiting list. Last year, she sent her S/S 2008 collection down a runway for Boston fashion week and this fall she triumphed in a "fashion duel" against the Brooklyn-based design collective Love Brigade. Stylists and photographers often contact her to include her dresses in their editorials and this year, she had recruiters from Project Runway knocking on her door (for the record, she declined).

All this might give a girl of 24 a bit of an ego, but so far, Shaw’s managed to take it in stride; the unassuming designer wants to stay focused on her work, and she is currently gearing up production on next spring’s collection.