A girl, forced to marry her father after he sees her playing in his dead's wife wedding gown, runs away wearing 5 dresses. 4 dresses are of silk and they are beautiful. The last dress is of wood. In the wood dress, the girl escapes, throwing herself in the river to float away. A prince saves the girl but treats her badly because she wears an ugly wood dress. But at night, she takes the wood dress off and dances in secret in her silk ones. The prince discovers the girl in the silk dress and they fall in love and live happily ever after.
This project is based on a fairy tale in which a girl’s life is changed by what she wears. It is through clothing that the heroine experiences the outside world and the wood dress is both armor and prison for the girl, allowing her to escape the threat of incest while also disguising her true self from the prince.
Each dress in the series is an exercise in controlling one's most immediate environment and how one navigates such an intimate spatial situation, using covers to filter what we feel by either exaggerating or muting sensation. They are also explorations of material technique and are made using a combination of high and low-tech methods and industrial materials such as printing press felt, rubber, and copper cable. The dresses are built rather than sewn and architectural construction informs their detailing.
The Girl in the Wood Frock, August 2007.
Wood Dress, August 2006. 1/16” Black cherry veneer, stainless steel hardware, copper cable, acrylic cable. Rubber Dress, August 2006. 1/16” Red rubber, douppioni silk, 1/16” pressed wool felt, rubber grommets, copper cable, waxed nylon thread, 1” nylon webbing, acrylic buckles.