The charismatic yet mysterious actress/singer Marlene Dietrich was a perfectionist when it came to her preformance and the lighting of her face. The genre of contrast lighting in cinema is associated with the film noir. 

Eventually, the small, repetitive detail of twirling smoke from a cigarette or a gun in the famous film noir movies caught my eye. In the process of trying to capture that intangible detail in fabric, I observed Dale Chihuly's glass works and manipulated fabric using dye in order to create different colours and textures in the same piece.