Amanita Set

Geometric Set, March 2024

Polyester pleated chiffon and napped upholstery, both sourced secondhand

This set, as per assignment, is made entirely using geometric patternmaking - only squares and rectangles. Additionally, both garments are made with zero waste cutting techniques, an exciting means to incorporate geometric shapes and sustainability - and challenge colloquial notions of what both might look like.

This set is inspired by organic, fungiform shapes, and the mythos surrounding psychedelia and the consumption of mushrooms - specifically, the fly agaric mushroom most typically consumed by Siberian shamans starting around the 19th century, celtic imbis forosnai (a gift of clairvoyance and illumination poets received), and related folklore and tradition of the consumption of mind-altering mushrooms in religious and ritual contexts from around 500BC onwards. Varied cultures reference meeting deities after consuming fly agaric (whether fae in celtic tradition, a religious figure, even god, or an embodiment of the mushrooms themselves). This set is an imagined concept of what one of these deities might wear in meeting the viewer. The sheer shirt acts as a thin membrane between the body and outer world, as with the thin membrane between reality and the magic realm at Celtic Samhain (All Hallows' Eve), when many psychedelic mushrooms are coincidentally in season. The heavy skirt is protective and in its napped, pleated, and released appearance, looks alive, breathing, even pulsing. In motion, the inflated arms appear to expand and contract.

Model - Yaxin Han

Photographer - Alyssa Duncan