I've been thinking about the women who inherit industries after they've already died — not fortunes but obligations, not legacies but architectures of absence. The Atayal wove their identities into their faces; the Piedmontese wove theirs into silk. Both traditions are fading. I wanted a garment that is literally made of the container without the content — cocoons are shells, after all, and this woman wears thousands of them, each one a small room where a transformation was interrupted. The lead weights in the hem came from thinking about what keeps us from floating away when the center is gone. Sometimes grief needs ballast. — Lux