Modality is a word with many meanings and it can mean different things to different people. It is associated with truth, possibility, wish and desire. It can also denote sensory means of expression such as visual, auditive, tactile and olfactory. Dimensions which all come together when we express ourselves, not the least through what we chose to wear.

How true or real do you dare to be?

Getting to experience beauty is an essential component of our wellbeing, an always accessible eye to any storm that might befall us. No less, anyone would be forgiven for losing sight of beauty when locked inside in times of global political and economic instability, all while global warming is still lurking at the door and the lifeblood of our oceans continues to be tapped for commercial profit. We draw our inspiration to change the world of industry from the process of insect metamorphosis and the mesmerizing beauty of the Protogoniomorpha cytora butterfly, the Western Blue Beauty.

Butterfly larvae are greedy little buggers: They spend practically all their time eating, and some of them grow to 100 times their size before cocooning. When finally full, they find a safe spot to hang while they metamorphosize. Their bodies start producing ecdysone, a hormone causing them to shed their skin one last time before swathing themselves in a garment of silk. The skin underneath sclerotizes, forming a chrysalis—the hard exoskeletal incubator in which they will spend anywhere from nine days to two years, having everything but their vital organs essentially liquefy and undergoing a staggering transformation, emerging victorious as a true bird of the phoenix.

In what corresponds to the blink of an eye seen in the context of Earth’s history, we humans have extended our reach to the entire planet, much like larvae devouring everything in our path. While the insatiable appetite of butterfly larvae is ruinous to their local ecosystem, it is limited by biology and compensated for by the adult stage of their life cycle, where they become exceptionally energy-efficient. Their sole mission becomes to procreate and until they die, many species do not feed at all.