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I went into The Met's open access archive looking for a textile. I found the pattern I wanted on a suit of armour instead.
Greenwich, 1586. George Clifford was Queen's Champion to Elizabeth I, and his garniture is etched and gilded with her cipher, two E's back to back, repeated across every plate from helmet to sabaton without a break. Not a badge on the chest. A repeat running over an entire body, worn by royal licence, three hundred years before any house put its initials on a bag.
So I took it off the steel and put it back on a body.
RUNNING CIPHER is one woven matrix and eight streetwear pieces cut from it, shot on Yorkshire moorland in winter with the sun never higher than eighteen degrees above the horizon. My first matrix was wrong: I kept the cipher at armour scale and it collapsed into generic damask. Enlarging it four times was what made it read as a garment print instead of wallpaper. That failed version is still sitting on the canvas next to the one that worked.
The casting carries the argument. Clifford's only child, Anne, was written out of the inheritance when her father left the northern estates to his brother. She spent thirty-eight years in court, won in 1643, and rebuilt the castles herself. The mark he borrowed from a queen is now worn by the women who took the land back.
Everything is on the canvas: the Met plates that fed the matrix, every rejected generation, the casting tests, the frames that did not make it.
Original work: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/23939
Armor Garniture of George Clifford, Third Earl of Cumberland. Jacob Halder, royal
workshops at Greenwich, 1586. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 32.130.6a–y. Open Access.
@floraai #FLORAMuseum
this is such a unique concept!
Thank you so much, Isabel! Really glad you liked the concept
love to see research materials used so cleverly!
Thank you so much, Nicolette! I really appreciate it. So glad you liked it!
Great work
Thank you so much, Rahman! Really appreciate it!
Thank you so much, Alaa! I really appreciate you taking the time to look at the concept so closely.
Love the concept man
Thank you so much, Basit! Really glad you liked it!
Thank you so much! Really glad you liked how they came together!
Love it 😍
Thank you so much, Jitinder!
The coat is amazing!
Thank you so much, Chiara! Really glad you liked the coat!
Going for the armour pattern instead of an actual textile piece is such an unexpected read of 'textile' for this challenge. Turning Elizabeth I's cipher into a full fashion campaign is a big leap from a museum photo, walk me through how you got from the etching to a lookbook.
Thank you! For me, it started with seeing the etching less as decoration and more as a visual system. Once I began isolating its shapes, repetition and symbolism, it felt natural to translate that language into garments, materials and silhouettes. From there, the lookbook became...
Thank you so much, Juice!
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Tune in with the judges to find out who will take home the $10K prize pool.
More to come:D
THE UNDERSTUDY
A dark palace suspense thriller micro-series, created end-to-end in Cantina.
WHAT I BUILT
Odette Lark is the secret body double of Princess Aurelie of Velmire, a tiny, wealthy kingdom carved into a white marble cliff above a stormy sea. For six years she has performed as the princess at every public appearance, perfectly copying her voice, walk, handwriting and smile. The crowds adore her. None of them know her name.
THE CHARACTER
Odette is 23. She grew up in Lowtide, the poor fishing quarter at the bottom of the cliff, and was taken up to the palace at 17 because she looked like the princess. In public she is flawless and composed. In private she is warm, witty, curious and a little reckless. After six years of playing someone else, she is no longer sure where the princess ends and she begins.
Her look is built around that split identity: a platinum bob, a cream high-collared jacket, and mismatched earrings. The pearl on her left ear belongs to the princess she performs. The tiny silver mirror on her right ear is the one thing that belongs to her.
THE PILOT
The princess is to be crowned tomorrow, and after the coronation the kingdom will no longer need an understudy. In one day, Odette is told she will be "free," hears the dying king confess that his daughter died three years ago, and finds a letter written in her own handwriting warning her not to let them crown her. Behind her mirror is a hidden room: six portraits of girls who looked exactly like the princess, every face painted over in black, and a seventh portrait of Odette with the paint still wet. Then a woman with Odette's exact face steps out of the dark, wearing pearls in both ears.
WHERE THE SERIES GOES NEXT
The pilot opens the central mystery: if the princess died three years ago, who has been ruling Velmire, and who is the woman with Odette's face?
Each episode, Odette must survive another public appearance as the princess (a coronation, a treaty, a suitor, an assassination attempt) while secretly unravelling the conspiracy behind the throne. The ongoing threads:
The double: is she a new understudy being prepared to replace Odette, the princess herself, or something worse?
The six erased girls: who they were, what happened to them, and whether any survived.
The letter: Odette has no memory of writing it. Is someone forging her, or has she been made to forget?
Madame Veyra, Mistress of the Rehearsal: protector or executioner.
Lowtide: her mother's letters stopped three years ago, the same month the princess disappeared.
The first season builds toward the coronation, where Odette must choose between exposing the lie and taking the crown for herself.
WHY I MADE IT
I wanted a character whose look, fears and secrets all come from the same premise, and a story where every episode could end on a question the audience needs answered.
🔥 Odette is such a cool name