For the assignment we were asked to create a garment out of something other than fabric, through the exploration of a material that is either recycled, reclaimed or repurposed. I chose to use silicone, a material predominantly used for industrial design, and repurposed it into a textile I could use as a fabric. Starting from a box, I mixed up and hand-made sheets of silicone, that I then used to pattern the dress on my model to fit her body specifically, attempting to create as little seams as possible.

My inspiration came from the process of tattooing, and embellishing the body with iconography we find beautiful and appealing. I chose to use a material that could help obtain this desire to create a "second skin," that I could then take and fully hand embroider, hypothetically tattooing her body and creating a design to help elevate the physical appearance of the natural form residing underneath.

My process for the work also reflects upon the social shifting towards the concept of "faster is better." I attempted to meditate on this concept, by pushing myself to do something that I knew would take me a long time, and rather than trying to create a way to manipulate something to have it made faster by a machine, I allowed myself to embrace the slow process of hand-doing, in an attempt to create something more beautiful than a machine ever could create. Each stitch within the dress has been specifically thought about, and meditated upon by my own brain, before being placed in, and no one stitch is the same as another. I attempted to express this by purposely adding slight nuances and changes to each pattern despite the fact that they are mirrored on either sides of the center front and center back.

To complete my look, I decided to make the shoes out of silicone as well, including in the black string predominant within the dress, however in the form of a stitch mark, rather than embroidering, not to take away from the quite elegence of the dress itself.

Model- Emily MacCloud