Work 01 / 04

What do we do with our dead?

Graduation project, DN MADE, École Duperré, 2025–2026

The exhibition room: the garment on the wall, pieces on the floor platform, the woven panel and photographs

Role: Research, weaving, making
Technique: Weaving on a semi-electric loom and a jacquard loom
Materials: Warps in black silk and in cotton and hemp; weft in cotton, linen and hemp. Mycelium: reishi, pink oyster mushroom, shaggy ink cap
Format: Garments, woven panels, installation
Context: Graduation project, DN MADE, École Duperré
Year: 2025–2026
Approach: Wabi-sabi: wear and patina as pattern

What does our relationship with death reveal about our society?

The exhibition

Walk through the room

Photographs: Keis Blanchet

Subject

After reading Gaëlle Clavandier’s Sociologie de la mort, I conducted extensive research on the subject. I interviewed a funeral director and spoke with people during an internship in Japan, to compare cultural perspectives on death.

In the West, every stage is now managed, rationalised, almost concealed. Grief has become invisible, private and rushed. What do we do with our dead? Why do we move them away from city centres?

Project

I first explored our complicated relationship with the passing of time, in a context where ageing has become almost a source of shame. How can we accept the impermanence of all things?

Drawing on wabi-sabi, I chose to embrace the traces of time: textiles woven on a black silk warp, where wear and patina turn into patterns.

Funeral design

I then turned to funeral design, and to the way it returns the body to the cycle of life.

I developed a “last garment” for the deceased, inspired by the shroud, which I set out to ennoble with living matter: mycelium, a living dye that hastens decomposition and benefits the soil.

Contact CV

Research: the thesis

Que fait-on de nos morts ? — thesis book

I gathered this research in my thesis, from the denial of death and the professionalisation of dying to post-mortem design and the beauty of imperfection.

Thesis poster: Que fait-on de nos morts ?, a forest photograph

Thesis book spread with forest photographs

Thesis book spread with eggs and hanging objects

Thesis spread: the professionalisation of dying, thermal photographs

Thesis spread on Martin Margiela, 1997: tubes of bacteria and mould cultures

Textile research I — Wear

Finding beauty in wear, and creating it through weaving

Textile research around the acceptance of the trace, with a black silk warp, where wear and patina become patterns.

Loose black threads hanging over mauve cloth

Copper threads on black cloth, loose loops escaping the weave

Black open weave with silvery threads and pulled floats

Dark cloth with wavy, distorted pale wefts

Textile research II — Mycelium

Exploratory tests of mycelium growing on textile

I tested three species on cloth — reishi, pink oyster mushroom and shaggy ink cap — in Petri dishes and jars, watching how each colony spread and marked the fibres.

Close-up of white mycelium growing on cloth

Textile research III — Natural fibres

I wove samples on a double warp of hemp and cotton, with a linen weft, testing different weaves as pockets with tie systems, as well as grainy textured weaves, so that the mycelium would take hold of the cloth as fully as possible.

Sample woven as a pocket, opened by hand

Weave draft “caoutchouc × armure texturée”, 60 cm warp

A white warp on the loom with the shuttle

Dyed squares of cloth, dye materials and small sample pots on a steel table

Form research — Scans

Scan of a draped cloth, research into shapes

Scanning draped cloth, I developed garments inspired by the shroud. The cut was designed to be simple to put on the deceased, with integrated tie systems.

Shape study 1: a small figure wrapped in ecru cloth

Shape study 2: a small figure wrapped in ecru cloth

Shape study 3: a small figure wrapped in ecru cloth

Shape study 4: a small figure wrapped in ecru cloth

Shape study 5: a small figure wrapped in ecru cloth

Garments for the deceased

On the dress form, I gave shape to several garments, each with its own form and look — drapes, hoods, knotted ties — all designed to be simple to put on the deceased.