A butterfly rendered in thousands of hand-placed glass beads — cobalt, glacial blue, silver, iridescent — each one sewn individually over the course of three months. The wings span the body the way a real butterfly holds still: briefly, impossibly. The base is a vintage 2000s corset restructured to carry the weight of the work, its rhinestone-tubed straps catching light the way wings do mid-flight. Lined in pink 100% cotton.
Materials & construction
Vintage 2000s corset base
Hand-placed glass seed beads, bugle beads, and crystals
Rhinestone chain tubing straps
Pink 100% cotton lining
Handwork duration: 3 months
$9,000 — inquire to purchase
Available for purchase, rental, and exhibition. Rental inquiries welcome from costume designers, stylists, and production houses.
Something ceremonial lives in this piece. A 1950s corset encased in glass beads — white, blue, green, iridescent silver — scattered like light through water. At the center, a rhinestone pear brooch caught in a nest of silver and bugle beads, quietly formal, quietly strange. The straps are hand-strung glass and thread. The skirt — a vintage Oscar de la Renta wedding underskirt — beaded to match, transforming a garment once meant to disappear into something that finally gets to be seen.
Armor that doesn't announce itself. Thousands of glass bugle beads — antique gold, silver, bronze, gunmetal, oil-slick iridescent — laid in dense contour rows over a black velvet base, each row following the shape of the body rather than the grain of the cloth. The metallics move as the wearer does: gold breaking into silver, silver into something closer to petrol. At the center front hangs an engraved locket held by a small brass bow, and it opens. The hem is finished in a fine silver picot edge; the straps are mixed vintage chain, adjustable at the neck. Seven months of continuous handwork. It is heavy the way armor is heavy — not a costume of protection, but the thing itself, quietly worn.