MORE ABOUT CAST SATIN

Most of the inspiration for this garment came from wanting to try a new technique — casting bronze pieces with intricate details, and figuring out how to attach them to a garment. It was a massive experiment filled with a lot of trial and error and led to me also experimenting with mixing geometry and the organic lines of the body. I really enjoyed playing with this and I think my experiments with mixing organic and geometric shapes are going to continue long after this project. And I think my experiments with attaching metal to fabric will continue too! While it definitely didn't turn out exactly as planned due to construction limitations I discovered during the process of creating it (bronze is really, really heavy), I think the results are pretty wonderful!

I created this look from double-faced burgundy satin and bronze casts. The dress itself is patterned from scratch. It's a princess line with a slight train to the skirt and it's a relatively simple for the sake for showcasing the metal pieces adorning it. It does however have the slightly unusual choice of having seams at the waist on the the front and back panels but not the side panels. That is both for the aesthetic value and to better hide a horsehair interfacing understructure that exists only underneath those panels to support the metal pieces.

The bronze casts were created from a more complicated process. I started by sculpting base shapes in clay, taking molds of that, creating casts from those mold in wax, and then finalizing those wax casts with defined edges sculpted in wax. Then I created sprue structures out of wax work and encased them in silica ceramic molds. The molds were fired and the wax drained before pouring molten bronze into them. When the bronze was cool, I broke the molds apart and cut the pieces from the sprue trees. I finished them off by sanding the backs down with an angle grinder and adding a French Brown patina with ferric nitrate and a blow torch. To attach them to the dress I drilled holes in key places and sewed them on the heavily interfaced fabric like they were gigantic buttons.