Design
An Embroidered Portrait Is the Cure for Selfie Fatigue
Michael-Birch Pierce’s stitched figures are giving the sewing machine new life in the age of social media.
It took longer for me to snap a good photo of my portrait than it took for Michael-Birch Pierce to embroider it. Two to three minutes is all he needs, because it’s all he’s got when celebrities such as Samuel L. Jackson, Marcia Gay Harden, and Helen Mirren are queued up awaiting their turn.
At least, that’s what happened in February, at the Night Before the Oscars party hosted by Motion Picture & Television Fund. “Bob Odenkirk saw me at the Phantom Thread premiere in NYC”—where Pierce had been hired by NBC to do custom portraits—“but he and his wife didn’t want to wait in line. When they saw me again at the Oscar party, they said, ‘We’ll wait this time!’”