Covered & Anti: Exploring Clothing For a Pandemic
“I designed Covered as a DIY ‘hazmat dress’ of the present.”
Second-year student Regena Paloma Reyes is currently hard at work on her MFA thesis—an investigation into the factors that promote city-dwellers' resilience during crises. Finding herself in New York City at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Regena was inspired to create two garment projects that blur the lines between protection and fashion: Covered and Anti.
Covered: The Hazmat Dress of the Present
Regena designed Covered as a DIY "hazmat dress of the present." Urban-dwellers can build the garment themselves and then safely venture out during the pandemic without having to worry about tracking the virus back into their homes. "With the pandemic wreaking havoc on national supply chains, getting your hands on a hazmat suit was virtually impossible," Regena remembers of March and April 2020. "In many cases, even when the hazmat suit was in stock, it was prohibitively expensive."
Composed of shower curtain liner, duct tape, and velcro buttons, the Covered garment is a stylistic take on traditional PPE for women who want to remain protected while stepping out into the city. Using a dress pattern to cut the garment pieces out of a shower curtain liner, Regena created an easy-to-follow DIY system. One simply adheres the garment pieces together with duct tape or any other robust, non-chemical adhesive. Once assembled, the user can slip the dress on over whatever clothing they are wearing or wear the dress as a stand-alone garment to make an anti-microbial fashion statement.
Regena says that Covered's concept was inspired by questions found on the internet during the beginning of the pandemic. It was a time when many people expressed fear about the risk of their hair or clothes becoming contaminated by coronavirus particles. "People were asking if they should change their clothes and shower after being outside to reduce the risk of contamination," Regena recalls. "Even though scientific officials urged that these measures were not necessary to prevent the spread of COVID, many people—myself included—ended up taking those unnecessary precautions out of fear. Having felt that fear myself, I wondered if I would look crazy wearing a full-on hazmat suit to go to the grocery store. That measure seemed extreme, but the sentiment behind such an action was so compelling that I opted to make a more appealing version of the hazmat suit: the hazmat dress."
With Covered, the user can feel safe without fearing that they look overly paranoid. Covered is waterproof and can be quickly disinfected after each use. The garment provides an extra layer of security between the wearer and the outside world, making it an integral addition to any lockdown DIY project list.
Anti: Apparel Against Disaster
Following Covered, Regena designed Anti, another wearable take on disaster resilience. Crafted from Dupont protective fabrics like Tyvek and Nomex, which are respectively anti-microbial and fire retardant, Anti contends that clothing can be a lifesaver.
"My hope is that people who wear Anti garments will feel both stylish and secure because they have taken a step toward disaster preparation,” Regena shares of her project. Just as workers don their protective gear every day, Anti believes that people living in cities should do the same. Not only because there is the ever-present risk of disaster, but because no one can predict which day will be the one in which a flame-retardant jacket will be the only difference between life and death.
Regena explains that the inspiration for Anti comes from William Langewiesche's American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center, which documents that many of the bodies recovered from the September 11th Terrorist Attack on the Twin Towers were those of firefighters who were protected by their fire retardant jackets, whose outer linings are often made of Tyvek or Nomex. The bodies that were never recovered from the site—because they were incinerated by the immense heat—were the bodies of female office workers, whose delicate dresses and blouses offered no protection in the moment of crisis.
“I created Anti as a last resort protector—if the worst happens, there is hope that the garments would at least ensure that the wearer's body could be returned to their loved ones."
Regena shares that she created Anti in memory of the unidentified 9/11 victims. The garment line is also designed for the loved ones of those who may perish in a hypothetical future disaster. Ultimately, Anti is intended to protect the body enough to be returned to the family for proper blessing and burial. "One of the most difficult aspects of the 9/11 tragedy is recalling all the victims whose bodies were never found." Regena says. "It's hard enough to lose a loved one, and even more challenging to not have any means of physically mourning their passing. I created Anti as a last resort protector—if the worst happens, there is hope that the garments would at least ensure that the wearer's body could be returned to their loved ones to allow for healing and closure." Anti wearers can give themselves a better chance at surviving an unexpected disaster, and at least increasing their odds of body surviving whatever the crisis may be.