Re-design

Well, how do Folks like the Bridesmaid's new dress? And can anyone explain why some of the YouTube screen stills don't show up, or disappear after a second or two (though they can be played)?

Be-ribbonning the Parasol

The making of a fantasy book cover, in less than two minutes. Looks like a book (and series) readers of this blog might enjoy.

Imprisoned in bubbles

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…

Lie down with snakes, stand up with… uh… snake mites

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.

Holy handbags, Batman!

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!

Albanian Eurovision entry long and romantic (the dresses, that is)

(Via.)

Where Gothic Lolitas go to snark

For everything there is a Livejournal community, and there are plenty of communities dedicated to one aspect or another of Gothic Lolita fashion. I just joined one today. wtf_burando is dedicated to:

...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.

Seasonal Swaying

24,000 LEDs

Really, 24,000 LEDs to make a dress.

Ballkleid

What we'll be wearing in the year 2000!

Aww...

In honour of St Valentine's Day, and via the ever-fascinating English Russia, we bring you Russian brides!



The same site has some nice Soviet fashion pics.

'Where fashion meets fanwriting,' indeed

There's recently been a ferocious, fannish debate (not the first, evidently) about Krull. For me, one of the highlights of the movie was Lysette Anthony. When I first saw it I was convinced I'd seen her before, and after a while I remembered: she was photographed by David Bailey for the cover of a copy of Brides that my wife got before our wedding.

Aptly enough, the costume Lysette Anthony wore in the movie became an actual Alfred Angelo dress:

Best dressed at the Hugos

Cheryl awards the best frock.

Another classic

The latest extravagance in the local charity shop is an 80s classic. I can't imagine anyone buying it for anything but a costume party.

Fairy tales

Disney has launched a range of wedding dresses inspired by, guess what, Disney movies and designed by Kirstie Kelly. Responses have varied from breathless enthusiasm to sniffs and raised eyebrows.

Perhaps regrettably, none of the designs (not even those inspired by Enchanted) look anything like this:

ICFA Photos

Emerald City may have ceased publication, but the Emerald City Best Dressed Award still gets given out at various conventions I attend. You can see the results for this year's ICFA here. There isn't a formal dinner or award ceremony at FinnCon, so the next contest will be the Hugo Ceremony in Denver. I am, of course, ruling myself ineligible, which is rather a shame this year because I'm very pleased with the dress I have found. Especially as it only cost me $23.

Mostly armless

Charity-shop wedding dresses come in two kinds.

Sometimes a charity shop gets recent dresses, from a bridal shop that's gone out of business or (more often) from display stock.

And then there's the old stuff. Sometimes spectacularly ugly:




Sometimes just unfashionable:

A biologist and an artist have collaborated to produce dresses from the film that forms on contaminated wine:

Cotton is plant-based cellulose after all, and this stuff is just bacterial-based cellulose, Cass explains. Before long they had rigged up their own system for cultivating the Acetobacter, using a small shallow vat they could fill with 500 ml of red wine. The resulting sheets of fermented fabric, semi-transparent with streaks of deep red, looked a lot like flayed or badly scarred skin.

From water into wine into...dresses?