Clothing expresses collective knowledge,
a language of signs for which fashion is the vocabulary.
My work explores the motivations hidden in the individual arrangement of these signs, and reveals the potential to use the garment in new and exceptional ways. Through projects designed to allow the participant direct interaction with the garment, I make tangible the individual’s personal relationship with each article. These individual explorations generate information that leads to larger investigations into social structures of economy and enterprise.
In my practice, the garment functions as an archive of its own history and cultural significance. Clothing reflects our personal motivations for collecting and arrangement. When I create garments, I focus on how specific elements provide essential clues to individual experience, as well as hidden desires and ambitions. Through experiments with existing garments, collage, and pattern drafting, I strive to discover the ways that the garment connects to the audience, through the actual design, fabric, materiality and utility. In one project, remnants of existing garments are recombined into new parts to make new wholes, while in another, I reconsider conventional rules regarding fit and functionality based on each individual’s interpretation.