While others were wrapping Christmas gifts with paper, cellophane and ribbon, Jennifer Henry was turning them into “brief-but-wonderful glamour,” taping her friends into dresses that looked like gorgeous pieces of candy. It was a lark. And it wasn’t.

Holiday Gift Guide: Flockflockflock

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Five years and nearly 400 original designs later, Henry is pretty much the queen of alternative-material couture—“alternative” meaning toilet paper, business cards, Chinese New Year envelopes, Post-its, Subway wrappers, polystyrene foam and holiday light strands. And her Flockflockflock looks have been seen everywhere from Mercedes-Benz New York Fashion Week to the red carpet at the Grammys, on go-gos at Hyde and drag star Mackenzie Claude at Life Is Beautiful. One of her pieces was even hugged by Lady Gaga, thanks to a young girl’s Make-a-Wish fantasy involving a purple-cellophane bubble gown.

LVW Gift Issue from flockflockflock on Vimeo.

Henry designs for charities and luxury brands, for fine-art exhibitions and friends, creating silhouettes that would be arresting even if they weren’t made of materials that seem so impossible.

“The same way that you create an artwork, you learn what the boundaries are and you learn how to manipulate those boundaries,” says Henry, an artist and a fashion designer who finds a home in neither world, because her creations are too wearable and too singular. “There’s a certain freedom to that, to not being fully accepted by any particular place. If you’re on your own then you make your own decisions, and there’s no pressure to do one thing or the other thing.”

That’s why she relished making 60 tiny vegetable-inspired frocks for Subway, and why those precious tomatoes, onions and lettuce leaves ended up on desks at Women’s Wear Daily and Glamour.