MORE ABOUT DELINEATION

I've been a huge fan of creature design for pretty much as long as I can remember. In fact, some of my earliest memories include me watching Star Wars and being absolutely fascinated with the banthas. I was quite young and while I was smart enough to figure out that it wasn't a real world animal, I couldn't figure out how the folks who had made the movie had created something that looked so real, and so different than so much old CGI, and yet was still completely fake. Of course I soon came to realize that they were created by an incredibly simple trick — putting costumes on elephants — but my fascination with folks building completely new creatures has stuck with me since.

Now. While creature design is astounding, actually building creatures that can pass as real is super expensive and time consuming. Money and time are not never-ending resources, but were even more limiting factors when I was a college student. However, when given the opportunity to create a look with the prompt "Uneasy Beauty" for the chance to be juried into an upcoming exhibit at the Fuller Craft Museum, I ran to my creature fascination for inspiration. As I couldn't go full creature, I ended up creating something inspired by the fear of the unknown. I showed this fear through the uncanny valley, covering the whole body in foam and textiles so you couldn't see exactly how human the wearer underneath was. I'm quite happy with the results, and the folks at the Fuller Craft Museum seemed to be happy with the final product as well as they did feature my work!

I created the main dress from a semi-ruched poly cotton blend and half-attached strips of hand-distressed poly cotton organza. They were only sewn in the side seams on one end, or half-attached, so they could be draped and moved around in a way that was comfortable and convenient for any wearer. It's for the most part a princess line sloper, but I drafted the sleeves and overall length to be far too long to add to the off feeling of the look. The head piece is a base of layered insulation foam covered in distressed and painted Fosshape, some window screening so the wearer could see through it without revealing their eyes to viewer, additional strips of distressed organza, and a flexible plastic barbed wire trim.