My sister Violet goes to the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in Manhattan, and she’s about to receive her associate’s degree in fashion design. She’s been there about two years, and it’s been quite unforgiving, basically four semesters of fashion boot camp. But she has risen to every occasion, and now, it all culminates this month with a capstone garment and a final exhibition of the best looks. Last weekend, I spent 16 hours helping Violet finish her final project, and it’s a masterpiece.

This year’s theme was denim. Violet took her design in a retro sci-fi direction, and dreamed up a crazy cool swimsuit/coverup look – a tight denim bodysuit and a dress over top, made partly see-through via hundreds of little hollow grommets (take a look at the photo if my description makes no sense). It’s kind of 60s, kind of like something an alien would wear. And it’s covered in hardware. That’s where I came in.

In the real world, I’m sure grommets are installed mechanically. But at FIT, students have to improvise. So, my sister went on Amazon and got a manual grommet press, a big heavy green thing she named Bertha. She was using three different sizes of grommet: 10mm, 17mm and 30mm, and she found that the biggest ones were almost impossible to punch down. I came over and gave it a try, and when I put all my weight on Bertha, I could just barely punch those 30mms. And so it began.

First, we cut the holes. Violet wanted them splattered across the dress at random, so we laid the big sheet of denim out on her dorm floor and just started snipping. When we’d finished a panel, we’d switch to the press station. Violet did the delicate work of positioning the grommet pieces around the holes, and I applied the brute force, up and down, down and up, over and over again. Violet was crouched like a hunchback, I was doing half-squats every fifteen seconds. Sometimes we’d just look at each other, unable to describe the pain. I went home that night utterly exhausted, and when I came back the next morning to help finish the job, Violet was still at it, she’d never gone to sleep. Who knows how many hours she spent in grommet land.

All told, we put in about 1,100 grommets. We were both sore for days afterwards. The things I will do for my sister. But the final product is a thing of beauty. The grommets look like bubbles coming off the fabric, as if the alien retro lady is emerging from the sea. Violet presented it in class, up against 300 other students for those 50 coveted spots in the exhibition. And she got in. I am so very proud of her.

FIT is not for the faint of heart. My sister will be there for another two years after this to get her bachelor’s with a concentration in evening wear. Someday her stuff will be on a runway, but in the meantime, if you find yourself in midtown Manhattan in the next few weeks, pop into the exhibition hall to see her hard work on display.