About me
Me (left) next to mock up of a corset modeled by classmate/friend Sherry Jiayu Hu.
Sammy Pallat started her career in fine art, painting, sculpture, and moved to fashion as her medium of choice in college. She aims to bring her knowledge of fine arts into her fashion work and create experimental art for the body. With an interest in time, wear, and mending, she often manipulates and embellishes her fabric to reflect her concept.
Starting at SAIC in the fall of 2017 she received the Distinguished Scholar Merit Scholarship Award throughout all her years at college. During her freshman year she received the New Outstanding Artist Award in May of 2018.
Artist statement
​
Conceptually, I am interested in the idea of time. Materially, I am interested in wear and mending in fabric and garments. I am intrigued by time mostly because I am confused by it. It is both systematic in its measurements, and relative in how we experience it. Wear is a way of showing material through time. Mending is beautiful and is also a way of prolonging an object’s life and adding to that object’s history. In exploring this life-cycle of a garment, I am also reflecting on the inevitable passing of time. With the use of time, wear, and mending, I often stumble into the realm of sustainability with my work, using found fabrics and highlighting the beauty in the extended lives of garments.
My work has gotten more experimental over time as I push myself to not only use imagery to reveal my ideas, but to also speak to the concept through the garment’s material conditions. In my work I embed meaning in the garments' own material, which involves experimentally playing with the fabric. I hand paint, dye, wax, embroider, mend, create tension, or add heaviness through weighted beads to push the fabric into new areas of meaning. Beyond that, I always push myself to play with sculptural silhouettes that push the body’s structure to reveal the collection’s concept.