Construction Dress

Lately I have had this obsession for the bright orange plastic fencing often seen at construction sites. I enjoy the negative spaces and the vibrant color! The dress is made from not only construction fence netting, but with orange fabric as well. Just recently I have been experimenting slightly with fabric manipulation, as seen in my Black Mass Dress (dying of the habit and front panel). For this dress, I actually placed the fence material onto the fabric and spray painted it black, leaving the imprinted outline of the material onto the fabric. By the end of this I feel that this dress is a visual representation of a construction material deconstructed.



Again, I have used volume and asymmetry, two of my favorite design concepts along with negative space, bold color, and interesting textures (plastic and fabric). This is the first dress I have made using found materials in years. The last dress I made out of unconventional materials was constructed out of newspapers and an old lamp shade. This was a very experimental dress for me, and I am pleasantly surprised by the outcome. It is one of my most well made pieces.





I wanted to do a photo shoot for this dress that was out doors in a very open and geometric environment. That being said, I was off to another trip to an area with high tension towers (one of my main sources of inspiration outside of horror/sci fi films). I thought the geometric angles within the bars were fitting for the negative spaces in between the construction netting on the dress. I picked a lot of shots with a big open sky because I though the blue stormy sky would be an excellent color to contrast the orange dress with.

Black Mass Dress

For a while now I have been inspired by images of black masses, Kenneth Anger films, and the designs of nun uniforms. The common thread (no pun intended) between these is that they all deal with religion. For the record, I am not a satanist though I have been accused of such several times because of my artistic influences. However, if this dress were actually worn during a black mass, I would secretly smile because it isn't just sitting on a hanger.





Using my design aesthetic of intersecting lines and dark overtones, I wanted to design an outfit fit for a black mass. I took shapes and panel design concepts present in the nun uniforms and paired it with a black gradient on the front panel, symbolic of tainted innocence, sin, or even dirt.





I thought the best place to shoot this would be a cemetery. This is a very macabre idea behind a dress, so I decided to go to the root of all things macabre, a cemetery! The narrative of this shoot is basically a nun who sneaks out to preform satanic rituals in a grave yard and basically "raise hell"
While editing the images, I wanted to keep an apocalyptic color format with a lot of greys that matched the colors of the tomb stones. I think this is my best photo shoot so far.

Lady MacDeath

My latest fashion design is high fashion abstraction of Freddy Krueger from The Nightmare on Elm Street series. Freddy Kruger is known for his red and green sweater, a color combination which often cause people to feel uncomfortable. I also see Freddy as asymmetrical considering he wears his infamous glove with the razor blades on only one hand. So taking these Freddy Krueger design concepts, I created this dress. It's green, like the green in his sweater, asymmetrical, and has volumetric strips resembling "shreds", which Freddy would often do with his glove. I am proud of this dress. I honestly think it embodies the Freddy Krueger design concepts without looking like a female version of Freddy Kruger, or something you would pick up at Party City.



In playing with my horror film concepts, I decided that the shoot should have both a Suspiria meets Rosemary's Baby vibe. Suspiria because of the red and green lighting (also reflective of the Freddy Krueger color concepts) as well as the elegant but eerie set (similar to the dance school in Dario Argento's "Suspiria") The shoot has two parts. The classy part (which is on the stone stair case) and the not so classy part (on the narrow dingy stair case). I picked that specific narrow stair case because I thought the cut out clover shapes in the rails matched the clover shapes on the grandiose stone stair case. The less elegant steps reminded me a lot of the apartment building from "Rosemary's Baby", so I wanted to be able to capture a similar atmosphere. My model also resembled Mia Farrow in the film due to her skinny body and short hair.