Trashion/Refashion Show 2022: Mothic

One of my favorite Syd retrospectives is her path through creating, constructing, and modeling her original designs in our town's Trashion/Refashion Show. She's gone from a four-year-old who used up most of a pink marker to draw what she wanted me to make her--

2011: Fairy Princess

2012: Rainbow Fairy

2013: Rose Dress

2014: Upside-Down Orange

2015: The Awesomes

--to a nine-year-old who took over some of the work of construction and embellishment--

2016: The Phoenix

2017: Supergirl of the Night

--to an eleven-year-old capable enough to be the sole artist at work, responsible for all the design, sewing, and styling of her garments:

2018: Medieval Maiden

2019: Gibbon Girl

2020 would have been the debut of her first work designing a garment for someone else, with three of her designs accepted into the show, and two friends excited to model with her.

Happily, the Trashion/Refashion Show came back in 2021, though in a new location and diminished capacity:

2021: That Girl from The Ring

So 2022 was when we got to enjoy our Trashion/Refashion Show back at capacity and back where it belonged in our town's 100-year-old theater. In 1922, people packed the seats to watch silent movies, but a few days ago, they were there to watch the designer of Mothic model her original creation on the runway.

Her garment originally started out quite different. Here are some of her application photos:

Syd later decided to change the undershirt to black, as well, but the bodice and skirt set stayed the same in the final garment. The biggest change, though, was the wings. Here are her original wings:

She could not figure out how to construct the look she was going for, so settled on highly embellishing wings that would remain closed and function like a cape:

Syd finally solved the construction issue by moving to the lightest fabric we could find--old cotton bedsheets--painting them with a combination of fabric dye and artist's acrylics, and creating a light structure from corrugated cardboard to give them the extension she wanted.

I think she achieved the look she was going for:

And here she is in motion:

It was a special day and a beautiful night, and I'm glad that we got to have it again.

Syd is still interested in extendable wing forms, particularly articulated ones that can be controlled by the wearer, so it looks like we've got our summer engineering project all figured out!