Inspired by the research of epidemiologist Keri Althoff, my garment seeks to embody the spirit of perseverance and optimism demonstrated by the HIV community as well as the diverse age spectrum of people diagnosed.

During our conversations, Keri spoke about the adversity faced by the community this year. From budget cuts harming community resources and research endeavours, to careless AI usage by state officials at global conferences, the current political climate has attempted to put the wellness of this community in jeopardy. Despite these challenges, Keri spoke valiantly of the communal perseverance demonstrated by both people diagnosed with HIV as well as the many research and healthcare professionals fighting against these setbacks.

As a depiction of this struggle, the materiality of my garment is delicate yet structured, acting almost as a soft armour. With each layer of tulle, the garment transitions from a harsh grey to a serene sky blue, embodying a spirit of optimism when faced with despair. Youthful and whimsical yet serene and regal, the silhouette of my piece reflects Keri’s specialized research on aging populations, combining the hope for the future of newer generations with the wisdom of community elders.

A Posture of Service – This design is a product of work in the clinic and the field, formal, playful, well-worn, and well-loved.

When I received the prompt for the HIV Unwrapped project, the first word that shot through my mind was supplicant, to supplicate. Meaning to pray humbly; make humble and earnest entreaty or petition.

Other similar words include genuflection and service.

This notion of service recurred and resounded throughout my initial conversation with Dr. Allison Agwu. She spoke about the need to meet her patients where they are at in life – not to assume, but rather to work to understand and to remove the idea that the provider knows more or is superior in any way. “If I ever act like I know more, I’ve lost the room.”

Translating these ideas at the level of a garment, I envisioned a trouser with a padded knee that has seen much wear and distress from walking, bending, squatting or doing whatever it takes to encounter a patient where they are at. The foam rubber pokes through the red sateen that has been top applied to the light grey pant fabric. The outer layer, a lengthened blazer with sharp lapel cut in a medicine-gray cotton twill, is based on a traditional lab coat with the addition of external red shoulder pads. The pads are fictive insignia, a badge of honor for the work Dr. Agwu performs. The top is a playful inversion of formal shirting with a popped collar and a striped hood that grows out of the collar’s edge.

Partnering with Dr. Shibani felt like a natural melody. Our conversations spanned the biology and molecular structures of cells to understand how and why our human behaviors occur. My hope with this artwork, inspired by Dr. Shibani and her research is to bring light to people living with HIV and other infectious diseases that affect the brain, spinal cord, and nerves, allowing the garment to open broader discussions on how we navigate this complex world.

While color is often seen as optimistic, for me it is about the story, expressing my spirit and honoring that as humans, we deserve to feel comfortable in our own bodies. Having a background in psychology, I asked Dr. Shibani about how cells and neurons operate, studying cellular imagery and microscope structures to understand their movement and overall form. I translated these concepts into my garment through slow, manual handweaving. Psychologically, this repetitive labor acts as a meditative outlet to release tension, while creating an artwork where people feel seen, heard, validated, and comforted.

There is a deep crossover between weaving and biology, from fibers mirroring skeletal muscle under a microscope to the metaphorical bond between art and science. As someone learning through this process, I hope to spread awareness and support continued research, using color and texture to remind us how deeply human we all are.

Rather than telling viewers what to see, this garment gives space to arrive at meaning for themselves, asking what happens when the body is first seen through stigma of illness, deterioration, and death before the living person within it is allowed to emerge.

In my conversations with HIV scientist LaRon Nelson, I was struck by how he and his team responded to increasing pressure from the new administration, which restricted how they could speak about central themes within their research. Rather than allowing those limitations to silence the work, Nelson described creating a gallery experience where viewers encountered images and formed their own interpretations instead of receiving a fixed explanation. That approach became the foundation of this look.

From a distance, the garment appears distressed, decayed, and almost lifeless. Sheer, translucent fabric is torn, layered, and draped into a silhouette that references mourning dress. Its first impression speaks to grief: the history of death surrounding HIV, as well as the sense of mourning Nelson described around cuts to HIV research, funding, and the people whose work is affected.

As the model approaches, that reading changes. Beneath the fragile outer layer is a living body. Black, queer, exposed, oiled, and luminous. What initially reads as death becomes life.

The garment does not instruct the viewer toward one conclusion. Instead, it creates a shift in perception, asking the audience to confront an initial assumption and then reconsider it. Like the gallery approach Nelson shared with me, the design leaves space for the viewer to make the final connection themselves, creating a more personal moment of recognition and learning.

The intention behind this power suit was to showcase the harmful and dangerous policies put in place for people living with HIV.
Partnering with Dr. Jirair Ratevosian, we explored ways to showcase people living with HIV beyond working in a lab coat. The real work that needs to be done is to shape the policies that affect people living with HIV. Upon researching many policies put in place today, it was upsetting the dehumanizing nature these policies come across, and we thought it would be important to show that.

The suit is oversized, commanding presence, and printed with HIV policies throughout. It’s meant to intrigue and educate not only the wearer but the people around who will see it and want to know more. We hope with this suit that we can have more of a foot in the door to enact change to policies.

The Hebrew word derekh refers to a way, road, or path, the course one takes when the destination is not yet fully known. Paths is rooted in my ongoing exploration of the unseen: the things we carry, believe, endure, and become before they can be understood from the outside. In developing this piece, I was also drawn to the work of Francisco Ruiz, DrPH, MS, whose HIV research and public health work considers the realities that shape how people experience HIV beyond the clinical setting. His work encouraged me to think more deeply about the weight of stigma, perception, and the stories we attach to the body.

The piece considers the uncertainty of moving forward while trusting that there is purpose within the journey. The elongated silhouette and exaggerated trousers disrupt the body’s expected proportions, while cascading fringe creates lines that shift and separate with movement, tracing the many directions a life can take. Within the garment’s darkness, gold is concealed beneath the surface, appearing as something discovered rather than immediately given. It becomes a quiet representation of what can exist within us before it is ever visible: strength, promise, faith, and the possibility of something greater than what the present moment reveals.

Paths is ultimately about continuing forward without needing to possess the entire picture. It is about recognizing that what we carry does not have to become who we are, trusting that what is being formed within us is preparing us for where we are going, and understanding that sometimes the path itself is where we are being shaped.

While HIV cure research remains a challenging and highly technical undertaking, continued advances in science offer optimism toward developing a scalable and effective cure. This look draws from the visual language of HIV cure research, particularly the scientific assays used to study the virus and the body’s immune response. The main assays referenced were flow cytometry and Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSpot (ELISpot).

These visualizations became the basis for the garment’s color and pattern. The high-contrast colors found within scientific diagrams, alongside the work of visual artists who have responded to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, informed the garment’s color palette. The geometry of scientific graphs and assay diagrams was translated into the garment’s pattern lines.

By translating the visual systems of HIV research into color, pattern, and construction, the look considers how scientific imagery can become a form of visual storytelling that reflects both the complexity of cure research and the optimism surrounding its continued advancement.

My conversations with Dr. Judith Auerbach centered on the different realities that shape experiences of HIV, particularly the ways gender, social background and marginalization can shift both the questions research asks and the needs it seeks to address. Her work with women became the starting point for this three-piece look and for its deliberate negotiation between traditionally masculine and feminine codes.

Constructed entirely in white denim, the garment references the clinical and medical context of HIV. Instead, the exaggerated proportions, fluid layers and disrupted tailoring create a feeling of suspension and subtle unease. Familiar elements of menswear appear displaced within a more feminine silhouette, as though something belongs and, simultaneously, does not. The denim is waxed, transforming its normally opaque surface into something partially translucent. What should conceal begins to reveal. For me, this became a way of addressing vulnerability and exposure: the feeling that can accompany a diagnosis when something deeply personal suddenly seems capable of defining how one is perceived by others.

At the same time, the garment reflects a tension that remained with me from our conversations: extraordinary progress in HIV treatment exists, but progress should never be mistaken for permanence. Rather than illustrating HIV research literally, the look holds these contradictions together.

In my first conversation with Demetre, he described arriving in New York in the early 1990s and living through the most devastating years of the HIV/AIDS crisis, an experience that led him to dedicate his academic and professional life to this field. His concern about recent federal cuts and proposed reductions to HIV prevention, treatment, and community-based services made the present feel like an unsettling echo of that history: medicine and technology have advanced, yet public discourse and governmental responsibility appear to be moving backward.

In response, I watched the movie 120PM and studied archival photographs of LGBTQ+ protests in New York, including demonstrations on Wall Street, searching for visual languages of urgency, solidarity, and resistance.

This research informed a cropped, 90s-inspired boxy denim jacket and denim cargo shorts-archetypes I chose for their unisex quality and their ability to take on different meanings across bodies and gender identities.

Bleached and distressed traces of pockets and closures appear functional from a distance but reveal themselves up close as absent, damaged, or unusable, reflecting institutions that preserve the appearance of service while failing the people they are meant to protect. Layers of mesh and organza create shifting transparencies, expressing intersecting identities and insisting that a person living with HIV can never be reduced to a diagnosis, but remains a family member, worker, artist, friend, and full, complex human being.

This look began in conversation with Dr. Renata Arrington Sanders, whose work centers on adolescent HIV prevention, gender-affirming care, and services for sexual and gender diverse youth. We talked about compassion and human connection—how central both are to helping someone through a diagnosis, and how visibility itself becomes a form of care. That conversation kept returning me to one idea: adolescence as the moment you first practice self-authorship through dress, trying on identities to find how you want to be seen.

The design pays homage to Jonathan Larson’s Rent on its 30th anniversary. It was my first exposure to HIV awareness in media, and I’m grateful to have had access to art that centers the human side of the virus and portrays people fighting for joy, community, and dignity rather than just succumbing to a diagnosis. Thirty years on, that message still feels so vital. I also wanted to pay tribute to trans pioneer and HIV/AIDS activist Marsha P. Johnson, her approach to dress as self-authorship, and her advocacy.

The styling focuses on layers, echoing the borrowing and thrifting of adolescence, when identity gets built piece by piece. Leopard print grounds it in something confident yet timeless and directly nods to Mimi Marquez’s costuming in Rent. The idea is that the pieces can be deconstructed and reassembled—mixed with old and new pieces and patterns—designed to be re-worn across different chapters of a life, the same way identity keeps getting redressed.