This collection is titled ‘Cacophony.’ While thinking about my system of making I looked back at all the different disciplines I’ve worked within: costume, fashion, and textile. All are intricately linked with one another but industries still keep them firmly separated and I wanted to find a way to harmonize those three in my own way. Costume, specifically in this case historical dress, is present via the patterns I used: all non-stays are derived from Patterns of Fashion 1, and the stays were derived from the 1830s stays from Redthreaded. Fashion is present in the inherent idea behind using wildly different textiles than what would be historically accurate, of doing something ‘new’ with them. I used those two to explore textile, mainly in knits. I was thinking simultaneously about what knits can do that wovens cannot, but also ways that the knits could mimic some of the wovens these patterns might usually be fashioned in. I was also exploring the slight differences in ways the knits can be structured to make these shapes, so partial knitting is a main feature in all of the knits. Stripes also became a motif for me early on in this project, and all but one piece has a different interpretation of stripes.

All save for the first sleeve I knit incorporates either bundle dyed yarn or bundle dyed fabric. I went with bundle dyeing because its a dye version of having ‘everything at once.’ Every dye I was using this semester for this project was used every time I dyed and on everything.

Frankenstein was also a base note for me throughout this project. I was looking primarily at romantic era dress (the specific decade I was looking at was approximately 1825-1835), and when thinking about romanticism, Frankenstein is always one of the first things that comes to mind. Here it guided me on some color choices, as well as presentation of the textiles themselves. I’ve always been interested in the flat patterns of garments, and how these shapes form on the body and form the body itself (corsets are what got me into sewing in the first place). All these pieces are either shapes of the body or forms that go on the body laid flat and stretched out, and they all have this energy of stitching together all of these disciplines and forcing them to be friends and hold hands.