steve coté

The 'Distal Device' is an autobiographical collection that is a product of two societal circles that I find myself living in. Those circles are my blue-collar upbringing and my life now as a designer. I often speak about how I live two separate lives due to these circles and how they and the people in them don't relate to each other in many ways. The word Distal is defined as the furthest point from an object's center, making me the "Distal Point" within these circles as I belong to both, but don't fully feel a part of either of them. As I constructed the collection, I became the "Distal Device". The collection is a physical depiction of how I have one foot in and one foot out of both worlds. Some of the ways I intended to successfully get this idea across is by taking cues from industrial materials, the wear and tear of "work clothes" and the environments they exist in, and applying it to tailored, well-constructed mens
wear pieces. Another way is by my materiality techniques such as my self-developed wash processes, hand distressing, textile manipulations, hand painted details, and the use of industrial materials such as roof sealer, house paint, and hardware that reference aspects of blue-collar spaces.