OTHERREALM

“Above all shadows rides the sun

And stars forever dwell

I will not say the day is done

Nor bid the stars farewell.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Designs for the fifth annual Black Hearts Ball, 2018.

Methods and techniques include chainmail, embroidery and dyework. All textiles are factory excess or secondhand material.

Three constant luminaries, dancing around each other, fire, reflection and distant light, sun, moon and stars. These three presences in the sky provide light, power. and warmth, the framework and foundation for everything we see and experience. This collection is a celebration of these celestial objects, often worshiped for their beauty, reliability, and power.

Photos by Alex Butterfield , Chloe Krenz , and Maddie Blackhurst .

another world, a different plane, a gateway to the tower.

Methods and techniques include foam sculpting and painting. All textiles are factory excess or secondhand.

Photography by Maddie Blackhurst

Model: Alexandra Lyon

Wardrobe, styling and props by OTHERREALM

Macbeth,to the Weird Sisters:
“Live you? Or are you aught that man may question?”

Banquo, to Macbeth:
“The earth hath bubbles as does the air, and these are of them.”

-Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3

Designs for Black Hearts Ball runway show 2016.

Methods and techniques include hand-carved embellishments, fabric manipulation, embroidery, and knitting. All materials are recycled textiles or factory excess.

Prophets and seers: they see, they tell, they answer no question. Clothing found and mended, used and used again, both talisman and living shroud. Coal black, smoke-gray gauze, spiked crowns with poison-green tips, the fumes of spring following behind them. Sister-brothers, living the future and drunk on the past, they point, stare, prophesy, and vanish.

Photos by Alex Butterfield and Gregg Jiracek

Makeup by Annie Shurson

Hair by Melissa Cable

Photoshoot, February 2019.

Wardrobe created and styled by OTHERREALM

Photography by Alex Butterfield

Hair and Makeup concept and application by Abi Gellrich

Models: Ashley J. Larson and Melissa Paakh

February 2019

Collection created for runway show at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, (MCAD) 2014.

Designs by OTHERREALM

Models: Sarah Ingram, Claire Ward, Katrina Haugen, Berit Johnson.

Photographer: Drayke Larson

Methods and techniques include painting, dyework and stretch fabric construction. Majority of fabrics are factory excess or secondhand.

Collection created for runway show at Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) 2016.

Photography: Drayke Larson

Models: Justina Proue, KR Foxx, Anna Mangue, Katrina Haugen, Nico Simmons, Nyasa Ann, Ochudo Cham.

Accessories and beads laser cut by Cristina Peterson.

Methods and techniques include dye work, leatherwork, accessory design and hand beading. All materials are factory excess or secondhand.

Concept: design for an imaginary planet.

A planet with no sun: the blinding white earth itself gives light and heat. Three continents, two are massive deserts, shifting to scarlet ice at the caps. The atmosphere absorbs every color of light, turning the sky black, ringed with white light at the horizons, where the earth meets the void.

The deserts are covered with shallow mines: the different layers of sand beneath the surface yield the raw material for the black metal and crystal glass, to be turned into clean, sharp-edged halls and houses. The record-keepers, educators, and silent priestesses glide through the halls in long robes and skirts, dyed the three colors of their stark and beautiful world.

The planet’s equator has a belt of islands, richly tropical, each ecosystem full of versatile vegetation, all different shades of scarlet, black and and white flowers standing out starkly against the leaves. This is where the gatherers work, tending each island like a giant garden, filling the silent ships with living things and sending them back to the deserts.They dress lightly for work in a hot, humid environment: covered in mesh to keep the insects out.

Freight drivers and miners boast how long they make one set of clothing last: altered and mended and full of pockets, belts with a place for every tool. Body paint reflects the white light back to the earth, keeps it from burning the people who spend their lives exploring it, knowing the infinite possibilities under its monochrome surface.

Visitors from other worlds are few, and they all give it a nickname: Tri-Color, Blood Planet, Nevergreen….. The inhabitants have their own name for it, but no stranger ever hears it.

November 2019 photoshoot

Photography: Alex Butterfield

Wardrobe and styling: OTHERREALM

Model: Sophia Tomlinson

Hair and Makeup: Abi Gellrich