Pencil of Nature

PN.26.004. Fashion. Studio project, 2026.

Tarpaulin

A fashion collection cut from sailcloth, shown on an empty tidal mudflat. Clothes for standing in weather.

Open the full document

Four figures in sailcloth stand far apart on a mudflat.
A floor-length raw sailcloth coat with a standing collar.
Look 1, The Luff coat
A boxy rust canvas jacket and wide trousers.
Look 2, The Batten jacket
A waxed green smock dress laced with rope.
Look 3, The Reef smock
A two-piece patchworked from old sails.
Look 4, The Mainsail two-piece
A brass eyelet and rope in rust canvas.

The brief

Design an original fashion collection, with finished imagery.

The idea

Sailcloth has been cut for centuries to hold a shape against force. Tarpaulin takes that vocabulary off the boat: seams that do structural work, eyelets that mean it, and collars that stand up because they have been told to.

Decisions

  • One location, a mudflat under flat sky, keeps four very different looks in one world.
  • Models of different ages and backgrounds, all equally unbothered.
  • Each look is named after a part of a sail.
  • Fabric swatches are computed from a weave, so even the textile page is real work.

How it came together

  1. Researched the anatomy of sails and how sailcloth behaves.
  2. Wrote one location brief and four garment briefs.
  3. Set a lookbook as fixed spreads and printed it to PDF.

How it works

The lookbook is a single HTML document. Its swatches are drawn per pixel from a plain-weave function with dye and wear.

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