## On Being a Technical Designer
I want to say something about what it means to do this kind of work, because I think it explains some of why the dress matters the way it does.
My day job is translating beauty into construction. I take a sketch — something that looks the way someone wants it to look — and I figure out how to make it physically exist. How to cut it, how to sew it, how to build a seam that holds and a hem that doesn’t roll and a button placement that doesn’t pull. I know where shortcuts are and what they cost. I know the difference between a garment that will last and one that won’t.
When I made my own dress, I used everything I knew. There were no shortcuts because there was no deadline breathing down my neck, no factory cost to optimize, no client who might not know the difference. It was the one time in my working life where I could apply what I know without compromise.
The embroidery specifically is not something my job requires. I learned it separately, years before, from an evening class I took when I was twenty-five and going through a period where I needed something that was entirely mine, something I could develop without performance metrics. I’ve done it on and off since then. The botanical motifs on the dress are the best work I’ve done. Were the best work I’d done. Are still, including the addition, though the addition carries a different kind of weight.