Local Style Potato Chips, a Chicago-based company launched by a former Foxtrot marketing exec, is less than three months old, but it’s already accustomed to the spotlight. The brand has landed on the set of The Bear, made it to the Cannes Film Festival, and collaborated on events with the likes of D’Amato’s and J.P. Graziano. 

Monday night at the James Beard Awards ceremony, Local Style made its red carpet debut, as founder Laura Gardner showed up literally looking like a snack, draped in Local Style’s signature “Chicago”-labeled bag packaging.

Local Style Potato Chips, a Chicago-based company, is less than three months old. Photograph by Eliesa Johnson

“I love fashion in general,” Gardner says. “And I had this idea: What if we could construct a gown or an outfit, something that would fit the black-tie formal-attire dress code, with the potato chip bags. What if the bags were my clothes?”

In looking for her crisps couturier, Gardner reached out to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, who connected her with Tukii Tucker, a first-year student in the fashion, body and garment master’s program.

“Me, having never worked with potato chip bags — because I never found a reason — I was just excited, it was an opportunity,” Tucker says. “I was like, Tukii, you’re known for tailoring, you’re known for your touch, you’re known for your drapes — but you’re known for those things in fabric. How in the world do you make the same things work with potato chip bags?”

Tucker steered Gardner away from a skirt, because the busy bag pattern might swallow her small frame. Instead, he suggested a chic jumpsuit, and the two ran with the idea. (You can see the process on Local Style’s Instagram page.) Of course, there was the Project Runway-esque twist: Tucker had to execute that vision out of crinkly snack packaging — with only two weeks to ”make it work!”

Two iterations of the dress. Sketches by Mark Noriega

At their final meeting before the event, there were problems: The fit of the pants was off, and one of the bags ripped. But Tucker promised Gardner he’d have a completed outfit by the end of the day. “I was running off maybe 45 minutes of a nap after three days of working on this,” he says. 

Tucker’s solution? He added a sort of apron that would make the outfit appear like a gown from the front but reveal the jumpsuit’s pants in the back. He says he drew inspiration from Gardner’s career metamorphosis: being laid off, then launching her own company. 

After learning that bags were sealed with heat, Tucker eschewed glue and instead borrowed a hairdryer from his hotel job to adhere the bags together as a fabric of sorts that he could mold and affix to the frame he created. The structured bodice and skirt were constructed from actual bags, while the pants were made from material digitally printed with the bags’ designs (you can see the full look with the jumpsuit reveal here).

Tucker and Gardner have plans to stay connected — and potentially collaborate again. Photograph by Zachary Raber

Gardner knew that wearing the outfit was a massive fashion risk —  and even second-guessed it the morning of the event. But it was a hit at the ceremony: Attendees asked about the story behind the look, and snapped photos (“I must have posed for 50 selfies”) with Gardner. 

The project was intended as a one-time collaboration, but both Tucker and Gardner’s wheels have been turning, and they have plans to stay connected. Tucker pictures a capsule collection featuring the brand’s five Chicago-centric flavors. So you have to ask, Potato chip bag fanny packs: When?