Statement Piece is a fine arts piece that combines apparel, typography and technology. It started by asking the question: What does it mean to project messages onto a body? What does a message as close to the skin really say? This piece was created as a response to the #MeToo movement. Going back to the roots of this movement, it started with a tweet that read "If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘MeToo’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem." This lingerie piece was created by laser-cutting this phrase over and over again in the fabric, creating what looks like a pattern from the distance. Every detail that went into the process of crafting this piece has a conceptual purpose, from the burning of the words to the sheerness of the fabric that mimics a second skin. It arises multiple questions: What does it mean to burn words into a second skin? How do you really see a problem from afar? vs How do you realize what it actually is when closer? Beneath how many layers of clothes is an intimate piece? Beneath how many emotional layers does trauma lie?

A conceptual lingerie piece with the words "Me too" burned as a pattern in the fabric.

The first step in the process was conceptualizing it; I wanted to create a lingerie piece with a political statement and I thought of talking about this problem. Next was sketching and designing the piece and the way the message would lay out on it. In the process I took measurements of my model, made the pattern, a prototype and several fittings until I got to a final design. I chose a sheer fabric to mimic her skin and at first I wanted to embroider the words into it: make them look bumpy as scars. However the embroidery machine could not handle the fabric or the pattern so I switched to laser cutting, which also had a conceptual weight. I sewed the piece, hand-sew details and then photographed my model.

Laser cut bralette in chiffon fabric, size 32A (32x25 inches approx)