Someone who painstakingly recreates, by hand, an object based on 500 year old woodcuts while learning several new manufacturing techniques in the process matches one of the definitions of hacker.

"6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example."

http://catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html

And the result of this hacker matches the second canonical definition of "hack":

"2. n. An incredibly good, and perhaps very time-consuming, piece of work that produces exactly what is needed."

http://catb.org/jargon/html/H/hack.html

The production of this dress was an appropriate application of ingenuity that resulted in a carefully crafted work of art, which is literally hacking:

"Hacking might be characterized as ‘an appropriate application of ingenuity’. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it."

http://catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html

It is interesting (to me at least) because it is something I have not seen before, done skillfully, and is not Yet Another Article About Rust or Containers (YAAARC).