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Heavy
Date
July 2024
This piece is a satin basque waist dress with beading and plastic construction nails forming a belt and was completed over a span of four months. The process involved draping the bodice and skirt, bead embroidery and creating the nail belt. The theme of this piece is pain and resilience. As someone who struggles with chronic pain from endometriosis, I wanted to represent my experience with this condition through this dress. The nail belt represents the sharp pain I often feel while the bead embroidery hides my imperfections and insecurities. This piece was originally supposed to have the effect of displaying broken mirror glass however, as I was making the garment I was having difficulty representing the glass and making sure that the piece was still wearable. As a result of this, I had to adapt my design to ensure it was still able to be worn by a person. This is when I came up with the idea of using lightweight plastic nails to represent the pain instead. I wanted the nails to look like they were being hammered into my waist to convey the pain of my condition.