Beauty emporium Sephora is launching a new corporate art program with an installation by couture-sculptor E.V. Day at its new Meatpackin District store — the first in a series of artist commissions in the pipeline. For Flamenco Tornado (2011), a  deconstructed red flamenco dress hangs from the ceiling, its folds and drapes flayed open and stalled mid- twirl by a system of fishing line. 

“In it’s larger than life scale,” the press release says, the six by eight foot sculpture “conveys female power, sexuality, and fierce energy.” The hand-made dress appears to be hung upside down, this “transformative inversion” becoming “an abstract representation of the churning, consuming energy of a tornado.”

Day first became known for her clothing-based sculptures in 2000, when the Whitney Museum of American Art included her oversized, suspended reproduction of Marilyn Monroe’s white halter dress from The Seven Year Itch in its biennial. In 2009, Day reconstituted one hung 13 opera costumes  — using 22 miles of fishing line — along the promenades of Lincoln Center. One of the works, a traditional wedding kimono from Madama Butterfly, traveled to Salomon Contemporary for a joint exhibition with artist Alice Aycock earlier this year.