The idea behind this jacket was to embroider the anamorphic skull from Holbein’s painting, “The Ambassadors.” I’ve always liked the idea behind vanitas paintings- remember that you are mortal and life is short, so do the best you can with the time and resources you have. I thought that embroidering the stretched skull would be an interesting challenge, and I was hoping that the illusion would be easy to see. I went through a couple of different phrases and styles of lettering before settling on “Memento Mori”- I will probably document those, as well as my process for embroidering the skull, in the Body Text Project section of my site.

Photos by Hal Martin. Model is Ingrid Vollset. Many thanks to them both.