With winter fast approaching the risk of flooding in the English countryside is with us again, and this year maybe the smart set will swap their traditional Barbour and Hunter boots for this offering from Italian designer Regina Regis.
The aptly named “Rain Level” wellies come in eight colours as well as the obligatory black, and are graduated up to 35cm in depth, the final marking being in an ominous red to warn of an imminent sock disaster.
If a dress made from broken 45rpm records seems too soft and decadent for your Spartan tastes, then a recent collection by Chinese designer Li Xiaofeng is sure to appeal.
Made from fragments of porcelain crockery from the Ming and Qing dynasties, these jackets and dresses are proof against the worst red wine splashes and mustard stains, which has to go a long way towards compensating for the necessity of eating all your meals standing up…
Leaving aside the black lipstick and Ziggy Stardust makeup (oh, dear!), this dress from Los Angeles-based fashion collective Beauty Is Pain is made of old vinyl 45s, each one carefully cut into just the right shape to impale the poor model when the she finally succumbs to the toe-crushing pressure of her high-heeled platform boots and tries to sit down. Truly an outfit for only the most dedicated of fashion victims…
The rest of the photoset at LA Weekly is well worth viewing, too, ranging as it does from the “Oh, that’s nice!” to the “Oh, my god!”, and all points between.
Seen on the glossy fashion blog ecouterre (too hip to have a capital letter, it seems), a “living dress” spawned by the unholy mating of a clothes designer and a landscape architect.
Made from recycled bicycle inner tubes and whatever blooms can be stolen from gardens and window boxes, the creators intend that the dozens of water-filled “vases” are populated with the flowers of the season, leaving me to ponder not only what one does when summer fades into autumn, but also the excitement that is sure to come from the inevitable attentions of bees, aphids and passing hummingbirds.
Now, if somebody would please pass me a Claritin?
Wikipedia continues to impress as the ultimate fount of all knowledge and wisdom, a reputation reinforced by an article on 19th century Vaudeville act The Barrison Sisters, billed as The Wickedest Girls In the World.
“In their most famous act, the sisters would dance, raising their skirts slightly above their knees, and ask the audience, "Would you like to see my pussy?" When they had coaxed the audience into an enthusiastic response, they would raise up their skirts, revealing that each sister was wearing underwear of their own manufacture that had a live kitten secured over the crotch.”
I’m not sure there is anything that I can add to that.
3D printers (sometimes called replicators or fabricators) use various techniques to create complex shapes from molten or powdered plastics, and now their operators are turning their attentions to the ripe possibilities for couture.
In best Star Trek fashion replicated garments are created in exactly the right size and shape, without need for tailoring or wasted materials, and as with most emerging technologies we are assured that the possibilities are endless. Current techniques either use knotted “stitches” that are an affront to the gods of topology, or linked pieces resembling chainmail - assuming that medieval artisans had access to wire in disco-era dayglo colours, that is.
Making clothes in this way is not a new idea, even outside science fiction, with work by pioneering designhaus Freedom Of Creation dating back ten years or more, but as the fabricators themselves are spreading from the big R&D labs to the basements of physics geeks, there is a growing chance of encountering homebrew implementations of such couture at the cons and fairs. The reception that these pioneers receive, of course, will remain to be seen…
1963 is often hailed as the year that US designers first provided serious competition for the Paris ateliers of Chanel, Lagerfeld and the other established names, and it has to be said that some of creations featured in this photoset from Harper’s magazine may have contributed to the decline of the old guard:
So maybe that is why fashion photographer Melvin Sokolsky elected to seal his models into large Perspex bubbles and float them over the streets of Paris, perhaps hoping that some of them would be carried away by the wind and lost forever. Note also his attempt to incinerate a particularly garish little hoop-necked polkadot number with the aid of an itinerant fire-eater, an endeavour that sadly proved unsuccessful…
The final collection of the late Alexander McQueen features these wonderful scaled ankle boots, so serpentine that it is hard to tell where the couture ends, and the model and the snakes begin:
Also of note in the collection are shoes so baroque that any steampunk heroine would retire weak-kneed to her cogwheel-emblazoned chaise longue at the very sight of them, and what is surely the most surly group of models ever assembled in one place. Even in the photo I can actually feel the waves of emotion radiating from them, ranging from derisive contempt all the way to contemptuous derision, and one can only assume that they were specially selected for their ability to frown and pout.
At Funky Downtown, this season’s must-have arm-candy.
The Batbag is truly a classic…
But then, so is the pound of minced beef, the armadillo, the bolt-on chicken feet, the donut (complete with handcuffs, for reasons best known to the designer), and the wedge of cheese… Oh, I just can’t choose!
Perhaps pride of place should go to what appear to be hollowed-out cane toads, though, each one with a look of considerable annoyance frozen forever on its wrinkled little face. It is hard to imagine couture that demands a preserved toad as an accessory, but evidently the taxidermist was prepared to answer a question that nobody else had dared to ask – what it must be to have such vision!
...that one thing. That thing that makes you question how much glue the designers sniffed before setting out to create it. The thing that makes you ask the lolita gods what sin you have committed to bring this monstrosity into the world. Hats in the shape of cakes. Prison jumpsuits. Cat ear headdresses. This is the place to discuss it.
Wallpaper company Cole and Son has a new range out based on the iconic fabric designs used by Vivienne Westwood, and she has produced some frocks from the wallpaper! The squiggle print, above, from the early 80s, is one of my favourites, but there are many more in the gallery at the linked site.
