one dress… many futures
An object from The Fashion Archive ignites AI creativity, re-imagining its essence across time, space, and medium.
A single dress can hold an entire landscape. When examined closely, material, color, and construction begin to suggest histories far beyond the object itself. This project, created and designed by Brian E. Taylor, Senior Instructor and CTD Department Chair, is rooted in the belief that sustained attention to one thing can open expansive creative terrain.
The project began with a dress he encountered in The Fashion Archive, a softly toned knit garment whose color, texture, and construction evoked dust, fragility, and restraint. To him the dress immediately suggested containment and exposure at once, appearing both protective and vulnerable. Rather than serving as an endpoint, the dress became a catalyst for speculation and visual storytelling.
Made from mohair, it carries a distinctive material presence that deeply shaped the direction of the work. Mohair is prized for its softness, warmth, and subtle halo, qualities that create a surface that both absorbs and reflects light. In this dress, the fiber introduces a sense of air and motion, softening edges and blurring boundaries.
Unlike tightly spun wool, mohair conveys a tension between vulnerability and endurance. It is lightweight yet insulating, delicate in appearance yet remarkably resilient in use. These qualities reinforce impressions of dust suspended on fabric, of matter hovering between presence and disappearance rather than settling into permanence.
Mohair also carries a layered history tied to craft, labor, and survival across cultures and centuries. Sourced from the Angora goat, the fiber has long been used in garments designed to endure harsh conditions while offering comfort. Within this project, mohair functions as metaphor as much as material, echoing both physical resilience and emotional necessity.
Using Midjourney, an AI image-generation platform, Taylor initiated an expansive creative process rooted in iteration and experimentation. Nearly 300 image variations were generated, each responding differently to the archival object’s material qualities and implied narratives. Through careful review and refinement, the process was narrowed to a final series of seven poster-scale compositions.
The visual language of the series draws from Dust Bowl photography by Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein. Their images capture faces marked by uncertainty, bodies shaped by harsh environments, and moments suspended between movement and stillness. These references establish an emotional and historical framework rather than a literal source.
Instead of replicating historical photographs, the project filters them through the logic of AI and contemporary visual culture. Subtle traces of futurism are layered into the imagery, creating a sense of temporal dislocation. Past and future coexist within each composition, held together by texture, tone, and atmosphere rather than chronology.
little earthquakes
As the project evolved through AI-generated iterations, the material qualities of the mohair dress were exaggerated and transformed. Knit structures expanded, surfaces deepened, and the fiber’s natural blur became a visual language of its own. The dress reappears repeatedly, but never in the same form.
Its silhouette stretches, pleats multiply, and motion becomes central to its presence. The dress shifts from a historical object into a speculative surface. Through this transformation, boundaries between archive, imagination, and projection begin to dissolve.
While artificial intelligence served as the primary tool for image creation, the project remains fundamentally human in its intent. AI operates here as a collaborator rather than an author, extending the designer’s capacity to test ideas and follow intuition. The technology accelerates exploration, but it does not replace judgment, curiosity, or meaning-making.
This series is not ultimately about a dress. It is about what happens when an object is allowed to fully capture the imagination and hold attention over time. From a single moment of looking, an entire world can unfold, sending small tremors through creative thinking… little earthquakes that shift how we see, interpret, and create.
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26 January 2026
Marcy L. Koontz, Ph.D.