The work of Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen, whose designs have been worn by the likes of Lady Gaga and Bjork, are being featured in the Groningen Museum in the Netherlands. van Herpen uses 3-D printing to make dresses like this one:
(you can see a model actually wearing it in the video above)
More images and information: 3-Der: Iris van Herpen’s 3D-printed dresses in Groningen Museum
(via Fiarce)
See also: The New Aestetic and Future Fatigue
My old friend Abe Burmeister was interviewed about the philosophy behind his company Outlier by Dan Gould for PSFK:
A few hundred years ago most products were sold directly from the maker to the user. If you wanted forks and knives you went to a silversmith. To get shoes you went to a shoemaker. The industrial revolution exploded all that, and gradually layer upon layer of wholesalers, distributors, buyers and salespeople have been added into the purchasing process. In the end you often find dozens of people separating the designers from the end users.
The internet has the potential to explode this game, but perhaps more importantly it also provides an economic incentive to. Most of those layers separating the designer from the user are layers that raise the price of the product and reduce the profit margins of the manufacturer. Gut out the layers of wholesalers and distributors and you wind up reducing the price of products and making more money at the same time. But to do this requires boldly throwing out the old business model. Of the established companies, Apple is close to the only large one confident enough to do it.
One of the craziest things about selling design on the internet is that there are no sales people. Not only can you eliminate layers of middlemen between the designer and the user, but you also eliminate the persuader at the end of the line. All of a sudden the product basically needs to sell itself, and anyone who knows how to google can turn themselves into an expert in hours. It’s a new environment and one in which the designer takes a much more important role in selling the product than they have in the past.
PSFK: The Internet Has Changed the Way We Make Products
This is an application of theory that Abe wrote about in his master’s thesis Nomad Economics. Abe’s very seldom updated blog Abstract Dynamics was one of the best blogs of the early to mid 00s and he’s still one of the most interesting people I follow on Twitter.
Our story begins almost 12 years ago, in a little town in Oregon, by the name of Ashland, where a group of kids came together to start a circus performance troupe called, El Circo. The group would gain recognition within the Burning Man culture for the extravagant parties they threw at the festival, featuring lavish fire performances, a large, geodesic dome venue, and a top-notch sound system that attracted world-renowned music acts to perform there. In a 2005 San Francisco Bay Guardian article on the effect that the various groups within the Burning Man community have had on San Francisco nightlife — an impact which now extends to the entire west coast’s, and arguably global, dance culture — the writer paid particular attention to the influence of El Circo […]
That same year, just two years out of college, I stumbled into the role of production manager for a newly-formed, L.A.-based vaudeville cirque troupe called, Lucent Dossier. Through that initial involvement with Lucent I would meet many other circus groups, including El Circo, who were by then based in San Francisco along with The Yard Dogs Road Show and Vau De Vire Society. There was also March Fourth Marching Band in Portland, Clan Destino in Santa Barbara, and Cirque Berzerk, and Mutaytor in L.A. As these acts grew, the I-5 Freeway became a central artery of culture, pumping a distinct combination of art, music, fashion, and performance up and down the west coast. A social scene evolved around these circus troupes the same way the punk subculture sprang up around the bands that defined it. For lack of another term, I’ve referred to this subculture over the years simply as “circus.”
Social Creature: Why You’re Wearing Feathers Right Now
(via Coilhouse)
Now is as good a time as any to plug my wife’s tribal fusion boutique, which sells many hand-made, cruelty free feather accessories: Siphonophoria.
OK, so this headpiece doesn’t have any feathers on it, but you get the idea…
Note: I’m on vacation until August 22, so I may be slow responding to comments or making corrections.
A sculpture of an enormous bronze-coloured shoe has been erected in Iraq to honour the journalist who threw his shoes at ex-US President George W Bush.
The sofa-sized artwork was formally unveiled in Tikrit, hometown of late Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein. The report from BBC News can be found here.
According to Forbes Magazine, the incident has been a gold-mine for the Turkish shoemaker, Ramazan Baydan, who claims to have made the shoe thrown at the now ex-President, now renamed the Bush Shoe.
“People are calling from all over the world to order this shoe I designed a decade ago. We have so far 370,000 new orders from Europe, the Middle East and the United States compared to only 40,000 orders of this particular model in December last year,” Baydan told Forbes.com during a phone interview through an interpreter.
At least Bush sparked an economic recovery for somebody. The full article in Forbes can be seen here.
Reminds me of something a designer acquaintance of mine, Melncoly, is fond of saying:
"Be yourself and you will always be in fashion.”
“A 15-year-old boy kicked and stamped to death a woman because she was dressed as a Goth, a court heard. The drunk teenager was among a gang of five who ‘savagely and mercilessly’ attacked Sophie Lancaster, 20, and her boyfriend, Preston Crown Court heard.
Miss Lancaster was begging the gang to stop beating Robert Maltby, 21, when they turned on her in Stubbylee Park in Bacup, Lancashire, the jury was told. The 15-year-old, who cannot be named because of his age, denies murder. At an earlier hearing a 16-year-old boy, who was aged 15 at the time of the attack, admitted Miss Lancaster’s murder and admitted attacking Mr Maltby.
The accused, and four other youths, two aged 17 and one 16, have already pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm to Mr Maltby. The court heard Miss Lancaster’s facial injuries were so severe, paramedics did not know what sex she was. Tests indicated she had been kicked and stamped to death, with the pattern of some footwear still on her head. Miss Lancaster, a gap-year student, died two weeks after the attack.”
(via Religion News Blog)
Rags was a counterculture fashion magazine ahead of its time. Published monthly in San Francisco from June 1970 through June 1971, its focus was street fashion rather than the fashion found in store windows.
(via Arthur Magazine blog).
A few words from former Technoccult guest blogger Fell:
Fashion is the contemporary equivalent of the mask magic used by aborigines and shamans from times past. The difference is that the shaman had the power of wisdom, thus allowing her or him to encroach situations both spiritual and sociological, utilising the masks to their advantage. Modern-day fashion wh0r3s and the vulgar masses are unaware of their own esteem, thus they lack the power inherent in themselves and rely on the costume, their fa?ade, to supplant these necessary inner wisdoms of power.
And later on, in the comments:
As for fashion, it’s always interested me. Only now am I beginning to properly discern between hipsters and trendy folk, persons with a true style and intimate understanding of fashion as a symbolic language, and then the rest ? those that buy into styles and try to wrap incorporate them into their own veneer, such as skaters, preps, goths, et cetera.
I think this is a very important distinction to make, between fashion and style. How you dress has a magical/consciousness manipulation effect no matter what. But those with true sense of style seem to be more in control of really designing their own realities, rather than buying into ready made realities. And of course, someone can be a skater or goth or prep or whatever and have a deep sense of style. These people are often the trendsetters for a clique, or are on margins drifting between cliques. Either way, and consciously or not, they’re bending reality in conformity with their will.
Full Story: Occult Design: Fashion is contemporary mask magic
The Center for Tactical Magic(k)‘s first column in Arthur Magazine has some relevant commentary as well.
And speaking of clothes, I got my “23 / Everything is True” shirt from LVX23‘s Shiny Apes store today (more here).
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