Silk Taffeta Costume c. 1938

Sarah F. Williams made this costume design in watercolor, and you can really see her process in the layering of washes that give the silk taffeta its sheen. The rendering of the fabric has this incredible translucence, but then there's this opaque, matte patterning laid on top: Vines and leaves and dark clusters of grapes that look like they’ve been stamped on. Look how the sleeves billow and bunch and gather, it’s so luscious! There's a real tension between the flat, decorative elements and the illusion of depth and volume that she's creating with the modeling of light and shadow. It reminds me a bit of Matisse’s paper cut-outs, where he was trying to reconcile drawing and color and form all at once, collapsing the space between them. Williams is also doing this, only with fabric. It makes me wonder, did she sew? Maybe it’s an insight into her own design process, or maybe it's just a beautiful drawing that invites us to imagine other ways of seeing.