SDCC Her Universe Fashion Show: Star Wars Legend Ashley Eckstein Remembers Her Ahsoka LEGO Dress
We talked to Ashley Eckstein about one of her favorite San Diego Comic-Con moments.
Happy San Diego Comic-Con Day to all who celebrate! The most popular convention around finally kicked off today, and fans of comics, movies, television, gaming, and more are eager to find out what the big event has in store. There are so many exciting things to look forward to over the next few days, including tonight's 10th Annual Her Universe Fashion Show. The event is being hosted by Her Universe founder Ashley Eckstein, who is best known for voicing Ahsoka Tano in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, along with Michael James Scott, who is currently starring as the Genie in Broadway's Aladdin. ComicBook recently had the chance to chat with Eckstein about the event, and she revealed her favorite memory from the last nine shows. Turns out, the actor is most proud of the Ashoka LEGO dress she rocked back in 2016.
"One of my favorite memories is my LEGO dress," Eckstein began. "Nathan Sawaya, a LEGO master builder and world-renowned for his traveling art exhibition called Art of the Brick. So I was working with his wife Courtney and Courtney, just so kind of like nonchalantly said, 'Hey, I'm married to this world-renowned LEGO builder, and wouldn't it be cool if he built you a couture dress made out of LEGO bricks?' And I mean, my mind was like, 'That was the perfect dress.' Because when I think of geek couture, it's combining our love of all things geeky, mixed with couture fashion. So that dress was the first dress where we really took something truly geeky that's not really meant for fashion and combined it with fashion. But then we did something that's never been done before, and LEGO gowns have been built, but up until that point, they had just been statues, they had been sculptures. They had never been able to walk a runway."
"And so this was the first time that we combined LEGO bricks with functional fashion," she continued. "So Andrew MacLaine, who has been my designer since 2015, we worked with Nathan and had to figure out, 'How do you take LEGO bricks and actually turn them into a wearable dress?' And so Andrew had to basically create a canvas made out of LEGO bricks. So he did sew a dress, then he took 5,000 flat LEGO bricks and drilled holes into each LEGO brick, two holes into each LEGO brick, and sewed them onto a dress like buttons, but made a complete canvas. And then he gave that dress to Nathan, and then Nathan built this gorgeous piece of Ahsoka art front and back on the dress. So the dress is made out of over 10,000 LEGO bricks, and it's completely wearable. It's actually very comfortable."
"It weighs 25 pounds," Eckstein added. "And it was the first time that I feel like we really did it right, where we just knocked it out of the park, where we took something geeky, something couture, and merged it together with something that had never been done before. It was truly geek couture and it went viral. I mean, I remember I got back to my hotel room that night after the show, and I was on the front page online of US Weekly, and I was so proud of that moment because we're known to just be at Comic-Con, but it had transcended Comic-Con and reached mainstream ... pretty mind-blowing."
You can view Eckstein's dress in the post below:
You can watch our interview with Eckstein at the top of the page. The Her Universe Fashion is presented by Mattel, and it is taking place at San Diego Comic-Con on July 25th at 6 PM PT in the Harbor Ballroom at the Manchester Grand Hyatt. Stay tuned for more from our interview with Eckstein.
