Clothes with a job to do.

Custom garments and costumes for bodies, characters, and impossible ideas. Built in Portland to match, adapt, and transform.

See the work Begin a commission

Gray pleated ensemble on a dress form in the Thornwear workroom — TAILORING / gray ensemble, pleated for movement

Selected work

Red velvet doublets and breeches hanging in the costume shop — OPERA / red velvet, built for the wings

A silver sequined high-heel shoe built at furniture scale — PROP / a heel at furniture scale

Richly worked patchwork tote with tassels and embroidery — PATCHWORK / a richly worked tote

Hand-dyed red fabric gloves laid out on a cutting mat — DYE / hands, cut and colored

Soft-sculpture character face built from quilted fabric — CHARACTER / a face built from fabric

Cream coat collar detail pinned on a form — TAILORING / collar, first fitting

Drag sideways for more

Match

A drawing becomes a garment.

A line, a texture, an era, or an existing world, studied closely, then made specific to a body. This build began as a frame of animation and ended as a quilted, wearable character, its seams mapped to the drawing's contours.

BRIEF / match an animated reference exactly
CONSTRUCTION / quilted panels, soft sculpture
STATUS / delivered

Pink quilted star-shaped character suit under construction on the worktable — The build: quilted panels shaped to the reference

The animated reference drawing pinned in the workroom — The reference, pinned above the table

Finished fabric face detail with sculpted eyes — The face, built entirely from fabric

Gray tailored jacket and pleated skirt ensemble on a dress form

Pocket detail on gray garment — Access, treated as design material

Collar construction detail — Structure where the body needs it

Adapt

One costume, carrying a whole room.

For a one-woman performance, a single ensemble held the arc of the entire show. Clothing engineered around how a body actually works: where it bends, what it must reach, how fast it has to change. Comfort and access are design decisions here, not afterthoughts.

BRIEF / one performer, one costume, full arc
ENGINEERING / movement first, then silhouette
STATUS / performed

Transform

Built to read from the house. Built to survive the wings.

Stage clothes live twice. The audience sees velvet that carries to the back row; the wings demand closures built for fast hands and fabric that shrugs off forty shows. For Portland Opera, both lives are cut into the garment from the first sketch.

Red velvet stage costumes with corded trim hanging in the shop — Red velvet with corded trim, waiting for the call

VIDEO SLOT A reveal, start to finish.
15 seconds, silent loop.
See photography-brief.md
for the shot list.

In good company: Portland Opera / The Clown Prince of Portland / independent performers and singular bodies across the Northwest.

The designer's hands at work over dyed fabric pieces on a cutting mat

The hands behind the thorn.

Thornwear is the studio of Jessica, a Portland costume and garment designer who builds clothes for people and characters that ready-to-wear has no answer for. Her practice runs from opera stages to public personas to one strange, wonderful commission at a time.

PLACEHOLDER SECTION / before launch, replace with:
full name and a real portrait (see photography-brief.md),
two sentences of career history, one named collaborator quote.

Get the full CV Instagram

Bring the impossible part.

Tell us what the garment needs to do, who it needs to become, and when it needs to arrive. We will handle the practical parts.