Visual Merchandising and Store Design | VMSD.com

(January 2012) posted on Thu Jan 19, 2012

Seven Continents’ president is also a designer, and he’s on a mission to make retailers see the green in mannequins and forms

By Anne DiNardo

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Ken Albright loves it when clients come to him with a challenge. And in the mid-1980s, his customers were asking his decoratives company to begin offering forms. So Albright began working with Romano Bonaveri at Italian-based Bonaveri, learning the process, how to design and the different materials used in making forms. “It was so fascinating to work with a manufacturer who was a sculptor,” he says.

As Seven Continents’ forms business took off, it eventually added mannequins and now both product lines account for more than half of the Toronto-based company’s business. “My goal was to make a form into a fashion statement,” he says.

Along the way, Albright learned how to change fabrication processes and materials to create products for a diverse client base, from Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch to Bloomingdale’s and Shinsegae. His work has included the original Abby and Fitch to, more recently, a line of recyclable and non-breakable mannequins for Joe Fresh’s Canadian locations.

One of the biggest considerations he must make when designing a line is how the clothes will fit the mannequin or form. In the early years, Albright says that Abercrombie requested a kid’s form in size 16. But when the retailer tried to dress it in its signature style of layers of clothing, the clothes wouldn’t fit. “So now I insist on getting the merchandise to do a dress-test,” he says. Albright also had to resculpt forms for Victoria’s Secret’s push-up line to accommodate the cup size additions. “It’s a combination of function and design,” he says.

Albright turns to fashion, clothing and architecture for inspiration. Taking design cues from a curvy condo building in Mississauga, Ont., dubbed the “Marilyn Monroe Tower,” Albright fashioned a line of accessory forms. “There’s something visual in everything you see,” he says.

The designer also feels a global responsibility to using sustainable materials. His regular trips abroad to research new designs and materials have led to such ideas as using bamboo. “I think there’s a social responsibility in everything we do,” says Albright.