Artifact & Elusiveness: Exploring Heritage and Conservation
Finalist Collection for the CFDA The Geoffrey Beene Scholarship Award
Artifact and Elusiveness explores the tension between preservation and disappearance through garments that reimagine historical patterns, Indigenous craft, and purposeful material degradation. Drawing from Innu painted coats and la ceinture fléchée, the collection reflects on mimicry, memory, and cultural syncretism. Stitching together lasered and scored textiles, tailored forms, and subtle references, it weaves a story of resilience, adaptation, and the beauty found in what resists permanence.
I began this research by bringing together three elements: art conservation, the cultural syncretism of objects such as la ceinture fléchée, and the elusiveness and mimicry embedded in Innu caribou-skin coats. These cultural objects reflect my dual heritage. I had previously explored both through historical and theoretical lenses and wanted to revisit them through the methodology of conservation and restoration.
During my initial research, I came across a YouTube channel run by an art conservator, Julian Baumgartner of Baumgartner Fine Art Restoration. In one video, he posed a critical question while restoring a damaged painting: Should all the wear be removed, or is the damage part and parcel of the artwork itself? Is it art or artifact—or is it both? Art restoration normally leans into disguising or repairing damage to fully appreciate the original piece of art and see it as the artist originally intended, but artifacts are just the opposite—the wear is part of the story. How can we create a story with wear?
Let us define the three areas of research:
Art conservation—or more specifically, artifact preservation and how we treat wear and damage. The inherent nature of damage in artifacts contrasts with the goal of art conservation, which is to restore them to their original state.
Cultural syncretism—the idea that cultural objects and practices can belong to two or more groups, which is exemplified in this research by la ceinture fléchée, the arrow sash, which is claimed by both French Canadians and First Nations. This history is both distinct and interconnected.
Elusiveness and mimicry—or more accurately, the intelligent observation and adaptation embedded in the construction and creation of the Innu painted caribou-skin coats.
The Innu Painted Coats
Before engaging with that question, we must acknowledge the history of the Innu painted caribou-skin coats, now held in the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Over a hundred examples exist, crafted by Innu women from around 1700 onward. These garments follow the silhouette of the French justaucorps and feature geometric motifs in vermilion, yellow, and blue. The painted designs represent dream visions experienced by caribou hunters and translated by women into non-figurative visual forms. Meant to be worn for a single caribou hunting season, the coats reflect a cosmology rooted in the animal’s life cycle and an acceptance of material ephemerality.
This impermanence sharply contrasts with Western values of conservation and longevity. The Innu engaged in a cyclical process: selecting hides marked by warble fly scars—considered “damaged” by European standards—and transforming them into intricate garments, only to create new ones the following year. This was not wasteful but a demonstration of respect for renewal and the spirit of the caribou. The adoption of the justaucorps form raises critical questions: Why would a nomadic people take on such a labor-intensive, European silhouette? Why incorporate ornate, aesthetic embellishment into garments meant to degrade? These tensions challenge design paradigms focused on durability, repair, and sustainability.
Elusiveness—both culturally and materially—is embedded in these coats and the narratives surrounding them. Non-Native scholars often described the Innu as migratory and invisible, reinforcing tropes of cultural elusiveness. The coats mirror this through their uncanny mimicry of European fashion, a blur of forms that resist easy classification. This adaptive strategy complicates binary ideas of assimilation and resistance.
The warble fly’s role, too, disrupts colonial material hierarchies. What settlers deemed waste, the Innu recognized as integral. Rather than relying on the fur trade, the Innu selectively engaged with it, strengthening rather than replacing their self-sufficient material culture. This recontextualizes damage as transformation, not loss.
Cultural Syncretism in La Ceinture Fléchée
La ceinture fléchée, or the arrow sash, is a powerful symbol of cultural syncretism—blending Indigenous and French Canadian traditions through its materials, techniques, and uses. Originating during the fur trade era, the sash emerged from the interaction between French settlers and Indigenous peoples, particularly the Métis, who embodied this cultural intersection. While the intricate finger-weaving technique reflects European textile influences, its transformation through Indigenous knowledge systems, patterns, and symbolic meanings reveals a deep integration of cultural practices. The sash functioned not only as a practical garment but also as a medium of identity and belonging, embodying the hybrid cultural space navigated by the Métis. As such, la ceinture fléchée stands as a tactile representation of cultural convergence, resilience, and the creative exchange between distinct yet interconnected communities.
This syncretism also held political weight. The sash was embraced by voyageurs—many of whom were Métis—as a rejection of buttons and fasteners associated with English merchants. It became a practical, aesthetic, and symbolic garment rooted in adaptive resistance to imposed colonial aesthetics.
Material Interpretation in the Collection
In Look 1 and Look 3 of the collection, I explore the concept of material damage in textiles and hides, drawing inspiration from the warble fly scars that excluded caribou skins from the fur trade yet made them significant within Innu material culture. Working with loosely woven white burlap, I pulled weft threads to create holes in the grid of the fabric, echoing these natural perforations. The result was a coat that reinterprets damage as form. While Look 2, doesn't directly show damage, the coat is built with remnants of found textiles; this results in a patchwork finish similar to working around leather and its scars and limited surface area.
This approach informed a “sun damage” pattern that I laser-engraved onto the shooting outfit in Look 1 and the pants in Look 3. Sourced from archival imagery found at the Materials for the Arts (MFTA), the pattern references discoloration caused by exposure to the elements. It stretches the fibers without breaking them, creating beauty in transformation rather than decay. This method reimagines wear not as a flaw but as a narrative, disrupting Western notions of value and condition.
Photo by Jessica Nepton-Chayer
Pattern and Silhouette: Elusive Mimicry
In the patternmaking process, I investigate the mimicry and distortion that occur in settler-Indigenous material exchange. The silhouettes retain the essence of Western tailoring while introducing subtle subversions. A shirt with multiple collars resembles a misreading of layering; a pullover with a reversed collar reorients the garment’s logic. These interventions play with the idea of elusiveness—honoring the Innu coats’ capacity to resemble yet never fully conform to colonial forms. The hunting coat, shooting outfit, and winter parka are reimagined through this lens of cultural translation.
Look 2 draws from the concept of historical pattern recognition, both literally and metaphorically. This coat is the symbolic and historical core. I began by referencing The Cut of Men’s Clothes: 1600–1900 by Norah Waugh, a foundational text that helped me understand the construction of traditional European menswear. Using illustrations from the book, I drafted a historical pattern, which I then brought into CLO3D to digitally manipulate. By altering proportions—broadening the shoulders and exaggerating the silhouette—I was able to reinterpret the form while maintaining its historical integrity.
The coat is constructed from a velvety textile sourced at Materials for the Arts, paired with a crisp white cotton denim. The material contrast reflects both the old and the new, evoking the visual language of tanned leather hides, which often vary in tone and sheen. As with the Innu painted coats, multiple panels come together to create one whole—an intentional patchwork that references the composite nature of cultural memory.
To further emphasize contrast, I introduced a flowing underlayer made of lighter, more fluid fabric that appears to spill out from beneath the structured coat. This softness breaks the rigidity of the tailored silhouette, evoking the interplay between precision and looseness, between containment and movement. Along the edges of this three-piece undergarment set, I stitched a delicate blue pearl stitch embroidery that traces the garment’s contours. This detail subtly references the blue lines found in Innu painted coats, reimagined not as pigment but as thread—an echo of gesture and memory translated through textile.
Rather than using paint or printed motifs, I chose to highlight tailoring itself as a form of embellishment. Through the act of pad stitching, the internal structure forms a visible series of diagonal lines that echo the arrow motifs of la ceinture fléchée. Using red embroidery thread, I emphasized a central motif resembling the arrowhead tip of the sash, followed by off-white and grey, also found at the MFTA. This directional flow is continued by the back lacing, which visually reinforces the arrow’s path from top to bottom.
For closure, I designed and 3D printed custom hook buttons that attach to small welt openings shaped like teardrops. This detail nods to the handmade logic of Indigenous tipi fasteners while maintaining a couture sensibility. A scaled-up version of the hook design appears again in Look 3 to enhance the pleats created by the cinching of the scored leather, creating continuity across the collection.
Material Scoring and the Ethics of Damage
I employ scoring—a woodworking technique used to bend rigid materials—as a way of softening leather surfaces but also accentuating the natural curves created by the wearing of the garment and the possible wear of the leather surface itself. This method parallels how luxury fashion houses slash unsold goods to preserve "exclusivity." But here, scoring becomes a controlled, labor-intensive act of preservation and texturing, rather than just destruction. It raises questions about what counts as damage and who decides. Like laser-engraved fabric, scored leather resists the binary of preservation versus degradation. Damage becomes part of the material’s life story.
Look 2: Historical Pattern Recognition and Tailored Embellishment
Look 2 draws from the concept of historical pattern recognition, both literally and metaphorically. This coat is the symbolic and historical core. I began by referencing The Cut of Men’s Clothes: 1600–1900 by Norah Waugh, a foundational text that helped me understand the construction of traditional European menswear. Using illustrations from the book, I drafted a historical pattern, which I then brought into CLO3D to digitally manipulate. By altering proportions—broadening the shoulders and exaggerating the silhouette—I was able to reinterpret the form while maintaining its historical integrity.
The coat is constructed from a velvety textile sourced at Materials for the Arts, paired with a crisp white cotton denim. The material contrast reflects both the old and the new, evoking the visual language of tanned leather hides, which often vary in tone and sheen. As with the Innu painted coats, multiple panels come together to create one whole—an intentional patchwork that references the composite nature of cultural memory.
To further emphasize contrast, I introduced a flowing underlayer made of lighter, more fluid fabric that appears to spill out from beneath the structured coat. This softness breaks the rigidity of the tailored silhouette, evoking the interplay between precision and looseness, between containment and movement. Along the edges of this three-piece undergarment set, I stitched a delicate blue pearl stitch embroidery that traces the garment’s contours. This detail subtly references the blue lines found in Innu painted coats (Girard), reimagined not as pigment but as thread—an echo of gesture and memory translated through textile.
Rather than using paint or printed motifs, I chose to highlight tailoring itself as a form of embellishment. Through the act of pad stitching, the internal structure forms a visible series of diagonal lines that echo the arrow motifs of la ceinture fléchée. Using red embroidery thread, I emphasized a central motif resembling the arrowhead tip of the sash, followed by off-white and grey, also found at the MFTA. This directional flow is continued by the back lacing, which visually reinforces the arrow’s path from top to bottom.
For closure, I designed and 3D printed custom hook buttons that attach to small welt openings shaped like teardrops. This detail nods to Indigenous tipi fasteners while maintaining a couture sensibility as well as a historical nod to the boycotting of "English buttons" (French Canadian resistance to the forced English rule after France's defeat in the Seven Years' War) (Leblanc). A scaled-up version of the hook design appears again in Look 3 to enhance the pleats created by the cinching of the scored leather, creating continuity across the collection.
Methodology: Artifact and Elusiveness
These concepts shape my methodological framework:
Elusiveness: The Innu coats’ adaptation of French tailoring functions as cultural camouflage—playing with form to both resemble and resist. This strategy invites play with silhouette and distortion in design.
Artifact: Drawing from conservation theory, I consider how damage contributes to an object’s meaning. Indigenous perspectives often recognize the value in “imperfect” materials, contrasting settler tendencies to discard or over-restore.
Historical Resistance: The ceinture fléchée exemplifies cultural resilience through adaptation. In rejecting English fasteners for woven sashes, French Canadians and Métis asserted autonomy in the face of colonial dominance.
This collection is an exercise in material storytelling—where garments are not simply worn but remembered, misread, and reinterpreted. By working with both digital and analog methods, damaged and repurposed materials, historical silhouettes, and contemporary interventions, I explore how clothing can hold the weight of both visibility and absence. Each look gestures toward a cultural language that is at once fragmented and deeply rooted: the ephemeral beauty of Innu painted coats, the hybrid logic of la ceinture fléchée, and the resistance encoded in every stitch, warp, and cut. These garments are not reconstructions but continuations—proposals for how fashion can serve as both archive and adaptation. Through them, I seek to honor the generational knowledge embedded in craft while disrupting the dominant narratives of preservation, utility, and permanence. Elusiveness, in this context, is not a loss but a refusal to be fully contained.
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Thanks for reading—even though I didn't win the CFDA award, I believe I was able to push my research skills to inform better design decisions as well as further my knowledge of historical tailoring, modern tools such as CLO3D and laser machines, and pattern cutting and silhouette. Whatever, for now, my focus will be on working on my final thesis until May-Sept 2026. -Jess
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