“I chose this place because it is a stargate between the earth and the sky,” Michele says in his poetic, lilting English. “Fashion is a magical thing, because the power of what we put on our bodies to go out in the world is what makes it mysterious. Without the life we live in them, clothes are just fabric.” A cape with a train of constellations embroidered in shell beads refers to Walter Benjamin’s 1928 observation that “ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars”. For Michele, constellations represent the ability of fashion “to illuminate connections that would otherwise be invisible … When you look at a person’s clothes, you see a connection to their story.”