Visceral Threads is an on-going project that consists in creating garments sourced from my expressive interpretation of locations and cultures. Physically exploring different locations of LA county and encountering their local habitants to create garments as a reflection of my depiction of the location based on what I interpreted from viscerally depicting the habitants.
Process
Tijuana, Mexico is the first city of the project. Standing and traveling in a packed bus on a Monday afternoon, observing and analyzing the comportment, body language, perceiving visceral reactions of their persona. I sourced these results into an idea of the garment I wanted to make that would eventually reflect my perspective about Tijuana based on my depiction of what I extracted from my experience in the bus.
I depicted a lot of people that were using the bus to get to work, wearing their casual outfits before changing to work's, wearing cowboy gear as part of their casual clothes, showing heritage by the way the people were interacting with each other, some joining each other's group conversations, some others quiet staring at the distance, showing open and friendly body language regardless.
These observations come together to show why I decided to make pants. I used sarape fabric sourced from a local market in Tijuana to underlay an asymmetrical cowboy star on a pair of cowboy-style pants. I decided to work on a pair of cowboy-style pants to represent the bridge from casual wear to work wear in the people that were transitioning from their homes to work through the bus, mixing this idea with the image of heritage and their identity revolving around it.
