Builds and Crafts
Laguna Art Museum: Recycled Couture (2024)
Artists were paired with different non-profit organizations centered around nature preservation in the Laguna area and tasked with designing and building runway looks entirely out of recyclable materials or garbage. I was paired with the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, which mainly helps with rescuing and rehabilitating sea lions that are often entangled in garbage and discarded fishing nets. The piece, entitled "Entangled Fates", is comprised of a bodice made of paper mache, a mattress topper, and discarded burlap with indents molded into the surface to replicate the injuries created by the fishing line and nets. The ropes, ribbon, fishing line that hold the bodice together by inserting into the indents were all pieces of litter, the net over the shoulder was created by cutting up used (and washed) garbage bags and making twine out of it. The headpiece is a sea lion carved out of the mattress topper and covered in burlap. The design won for Best Use of Materials.
Corsets and Crinoline- 1844
Corset that was scaled up using a gridded pattern that was originally from the 1840s as found in Corsets and Crinoline. From the scaled-up pattern, it was then drafted closer to my measurements before being fit multiple times across 3 muslin mock-ups before being repatterned and making the final corset out of coutil and spiral steel boning.
The biggest visual alteration made to the original 1844 pattern was my decision to reduce the length of the front panel's point for ease of sitting, which can be seen as you go between the mock-up pieces and the final product.
Leather Jacket Patches
Jacket set was originally designed based off of lyrics from the songs Algorhythm and 3005 by rapper Childish Gabino. The patches were created with recycled materials, custom made stencils, free motion embroidery, and leather painting.
"Jenny" the Puppet
Based off of the short story The Girl with the Green Ribbon, Jenny is a human sized puppet created by using a dress form as a body and hand sewn arms and detachable head.
The face was formed out of liquid latex and toilet paper to create an unsettling texture and then hand painted with alcohol-based paints. The head is quick rigged with a zip tie in order to fall off when the green ribbon is removed. With no legs, the full puppet is meant to be suspended into the air on a set of hooks and cords.
1930s Bias-Cut Dress
Based off of an original 1930s evening gown, I draped in a lightweight cotton and made adjustments to the original design to make it more comfortable and suitable for everyday wear.
I specifically focused in on pattern matching the stripes, which was made more challenging by the rotating variation found in the stripe patterns.
