Love (Doesn’t) Conquer All

My inspiration for this project comes from Margret Asgeirsdottir’s red silk dress in “The Greenlanders,” by Jane Smiley. The dress plays a pivotal role in her adulterous affair with Skuli, a handsome visitor from Norway. Skuli regales her with stories of the wider world outside Greenland, and she is particularly taken by his descriptions of the bright, outlandish court fashions he has seen. Feverish with infatuation, she steals a bolt of red silk from her sister-in-law, some of the only silk on the entire island, and sews it secretly, night after night, into a dress which sets her apart from her isolated, unfashionable everyday life. After the affair is discovered and her lover killed, she is banished, and the dress is unpicked and vanishes from the narrative for decades. As an archaeologist who works primarily in the Arctic, I was excited to combine archaeology, medieval fashion, and a tumultuous love story in one garment! I wanted to create what an Norse Greenlander’s vision of 1370s Norwegian court dress might be. I based the design on extant examples from the Herjolfsnes cemetery since they reflect the mental templates Margret might have had about how to shape and construct dresses. This included seam finishes, decorative elements, and button construction. I then modified the design to include some of the elements of 14th century European fashion which Margret heard about (but not seen) from Skuli. I accessorized the outfit with Medieval-style shoes, and Alaskan Inuit walrus ivory earrings (neither of which I made).