In 2022 I returned to garment making after several years of swearing it off. I had never found the joy in garment sewing — with clothing, I am motivated solely by the end result (rather than the process) and I am too inexperienced of a seamstress to accurately predict whether an experiment will be successful in advance. Garment fitting is a set of skills I have never developed. I’m also an obnoxious perfectionist and tend to hold myself to unreasonably high standards of execution, as well as a miser with a low quality sewing machine, and until recently, no serger. Combine these factors and I had a long run of garment sewing from 2014 through about 2019 that was plagued by disappointments and a lot of unworn homemade clothing.
But in 2022 I found myself needing an enormous amount of personal, energetic protection. It felt intuitive, obvious, and undeniable that clothing myself could play a role in trying to stay present in my body while enduring a level of stress previously unimaginable to me. During that time I also shaved my head, in grief and in mourning. I imagined the act to be a singular event, like rending one’s clothes: marking a moment with an act of destruction. But instead, I have kept it shorn. And I began to dress myself differently.
It’s been a little over a year since I began to focus on making clothing again. And this time, unlike all my previous attempts — driven predominantly by a desire to make neutral, unassuming garments — I have found myself drawn to things that feel loud. Particular. At times perhaps even aggressive. Rather than try to disappear into loose, androgynous garments in black, I desire to take up a space. And a lot of it.
Last year I knit a vermillion sweater — the first injection of a color into my wardrobe in well over a decade, though already nearly a year into my obsession with that very particular hue. Then I became fixated on the idea of a vermillion gown, with tiers of gathers, and large balloon sleeves; a sort of priestess garment, a ceremonial robe. And so I made it. That summer, I made it specifically to walk into work and quit my job. And since then, I have continued to feel a desire to dress myself with my own work, of my own hand, for difficult and hard passages in life. To create a special kind of barrier between myself and the world, with an imbued significance both personal and private.
I don’t have photos of that red gown to share today, or the vermillion and neon pink colorblocked one I made after that, or the even more voluminous toile, originally in natural muslin, that I have since overdyed with indigo and begun to hand-embroider “tattoos” all over. In fact I’m sharing this particular plaid monstrosity here today because life has been hectic, I’ve been away from my studio for weeks, wholly unable to concentrate on quilts, and not photographing anything at all. There is no studio work to speak of. But when I first made this gown, in December of 2022 in preparation for a deeply uncomfortable conversation, I took these pictures with the intention of writing here about defending oneself through cloth.
In the end, that uncomfortable conversation didn’t happen, though I arrived dressed for the part. And similar to that uncomfortable reality unspooling in its own time, through the background of the last six months, this dress remains seemingly impossible for me to capture, either in words or in photos. Nothing about how I feel when I wear this dress feels encapsulated in these images. I also find, when I’m wearing it, my visual experience of seeing it is not nearly so harsh, dramatic, or brash as it feels in photos. When I am wearing this dress I find it extremely beautiful; when I look at images of it I find it appalling. I wear it often. Over a black sweater and tights in the winter (as pictured); with bare arms and black tennis shoes in the heat. It is entirely linen and very, very heavy; the circumference of the bottom tier is over ten feet. I step on it when I use the stairs. I pile it in my lap when I sit so as not to drag it all along the floor. I wore it through so many airports through the end of last year and the beginning of this one that I’ve lost count; I was stopped by strangers and admired for it in every single one.
We’ve been through the ringer, this dress and I. I was deeply dissatisfied with it at first; I made the bodice twice, cutting off the first attempt from the wholly completed garment (after several wears) and re-attaching a second one, in a different configurations of plaids, only to decide I preferred the first attempt, and repeat the surgery. I had arrived at the idea of this gown after seeing the below image advertised by (yes, you guessed it) the inimitable M&M. I became obsessed with the neon yellow. I spent months debating a purchase. In the end, I bought about $400 worth of the entire collection. I added another black plaid. I absolutely hated the orange one, and I should have listened to my gut there; I am still considering disassembling the entire dress yet again, to replace those pieces with something else.
Image by Merchant & Mills
Perhaps, in its fourth, or fiftieth iteration, this gown will feel exactly right. Or perhaps it never will, and it won’t ever matter, and we will spend a long, long time together, this dress and I, garnering garish attention in airports, in quiet corporate offices, and on the sidewalks of Portland.
There are a few more very loud, very impractical bees-in-my-garment-making-bonnet at the moment. It’s hard to know what will or won’t actually emerge from the soup of my brain. Just like this gown is not what I’d hoped or expected, likely the next one won’t be, either. And, just like this one, I hope to find I can love these handmade armaments regardless, love them fiercely, even as I find them imperfect, even as I find them visually — and sometimes physically — agitating. I have hope that whatever emerges next is the same. A litany of lessons, a struggle in self-expression, and also self-protection; in taking up space, holding one’s own, and disregarding everyone else’s opinions, but never my own.
oh! Dress is based on Vivian Shao Chen’s Orchards Dress Pattern, with some obvious modifications, should you wish to make your own.