The creation of this garment stemmed from personal questions of atttachment-based suffering, control over outcomes, and material desires. As I explored this topic, I searched for a way to visually communicate such internal thoughts, and naturally gravitated to moths as visual inspiration to communicate ideas of detachment from the body, death, transformation, and renewal. For this dress in particular, the bizarre looper moth was my main source of inspiration, but my own journey to create a visual language that revealed the presence of the soul preceeded any use of external imagery.

In the way that moths completely let go of their physical forms, we must too, and as we do this, our souls are revealed. Our souls appear behind the mess of tangled attachments to our physical reality. This piece joins the human body with the moth to highlight connections to our inner selves and the natural world.

To create a garment that commicates a sense of ephemrality that I associate with the body, I refrained from fully planning its structure and pattern. Initially, I had the shape and measurements planned, but no determined vision of the full design. My entire process once I began knitting was intuitve, which meant trusting myself and my hands to be in an attentive conversation with the yarn. With a combinaiton of wool, mohair, nylon, cotton, and other unknown fibers, I was able to achieve an array of textures to create a dynamic garment that reflected the idea of impermanence, as well as the transformations of moths.

Materials: Wool, Cotton, Polyester, Mohair, Single-Bed Knitting Machine