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Photo by Eugene Oh

“I’m the zipper expert!” jokes Cat Chow. While it’s true that her zipper dresses and skirts did catapult her to fame, she’s actually being modest—she’s an expert in many materials.

She weaves, coils, and rivets ordinary objects into extraordinary couture pieces. Her pieces include a wedding dress made from one continuous coil of zipper, a kimono made of Power Rangers trading cards, and a floor-length evening gown woven out of shredded one-dollar bills.

Cat’s abstract take on fashion has won her serious respect from the art world. She has exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the MoMA recently purchased one of Cat’s zipper dresses for its permanent collection. She does have the occasional detractor who gripes about her avant-garde approach to fashion and her populist approach to art: “Fashion people say it’s not practical—the fabrics are too hard—and art people say to move it away from the body.” But this Northwestern University costume design graduate doesn’t have any intrinsic ties to either of those worlds, and it’s this very distance and independence that gives her her unique perspective.

While the sculptural lines of her clothes are reminiscent of the architectural dresses of Charles James, and her use of unusual materials echo that of Paco Rabanne’s metal dresses, Chow’s designs are more conceptually driven than her predecessors. Her dress made of 1,000 shredded one-dollar bills—which she titled Not for Sale—speaks volumes about the objectification and commodification of women. Bonded, the wedding dress constructed of one continuous zipper, makes a clear statement on the constriction of matrimony, while at the same time cheekily commenting on the matrimonial bonding on the wedding night.

Conceptual purity, achieved by an economy of language, is her holy grail: “Design is sometimes excessive. I’m interested in making the biggest impact by saying the least.”