Photo: Joshua White, courtesy of SCI-Arc.

The impossible-to-categorize work of LA-based designer Elena Manferdini has been making waves throughout the worlds of fashion, industrial design, engineering and architecture. Her stunning laser-cut creations have nabbed her clients from Fiat to Valentino, and she was recently featured in the MOCA exhibition Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture which opens at the Somerset House in London this Thursday.

For a new site-specific installation, MERLETTI< inter >LACE, Manferdini interprets traditional Italian lacemaking techniques in a dramatic canopy that drapes across the SCI-Arc Gallery in downtown LA. Corelifornia correspondent Alissa Walker caught up with her at the opening just as the DJ cranked up the techno music. MERLETTI< inter >LACE is up until May 11 at SCI-Arc.