Steampunk Moves Between 2 Worlds

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/fashion/08PUNK.html

Interesting New York Fashion Style article

New Technology - Lunar Design

Brilliant company pioneering awesome designs using new exciting innovations.

http://www.lunar.com/portfolio/fashion/index.html

beat dress

beat dress

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New Technology - Kenetic Dress

Gender and sexuality Week 4

Gender and sexuality

Week 4

Some quotes from the text that really got the ball rolling for me; it was hard for me not to rip straight into a MASSIVE rant, so I created a little infrastructure to address the main highlight text in my resource book:

“Elegance does not necessarily increase sexual appeal – it may on the contrary be forbidding – and, paradoxically, exaggerated masculinity or femininity may be less than a sexual presence tinged with ambiguity…”

&

“Men impose punishing restrictions on women…”

It seems in institutions away from CIT men dominate the fashion world, however the independent strong and very intelligent women in our course seem to be an unusual population and paradox when compared to the international “Taste makers” of labels who in the majority are men. The super labels male designers groom and prime women into a image of beauty they themselves create despite being almost completely detached from the complexity of modern issues and ideals that have emerged from contemporary society, it seems these men are SO detached and numb to their outside world that they are haemorrhaging consumers. Still designing for women 25 – 35… in the 1940’s. We're crafted into the image of women through men, who want us to be them??? That's how i see it as.

“Chaos of androgyny”

My designs embrace a masculine edge, I love challenging opreconceived notions of what is female, what is male and what does she have the balls to wear I love challenging, and making the demographic uncomfortable, creating a aesthetic that many women identify and embrace, however boyish it is playing with the back and forth with genders.

“Change characters. How many fashions can you play?”

this one really got me, even in 1984, Vogue was categorising complex women into pigeon holes that they didn’t fit nor belong. It’s the mentality and restrictions that these magazines create that have completely skewed the everyday women into believing her individuality is justified, yet in reality is a marketed fabrication from these infrastructures.

Subcultures and individualism: Harajuku Week 2 and 3

Subcultures and individualism: Harajuku

Week 2 and 3

Subculture and individualism was really interesting to deconstruct and discuss, how we isolated the trends and fads that emerge and subside:

“The cycle leading from opposition to diffusion, from resistance to incorporation encloses watch successive subculture…”

The punks being a prime example, how “catwoman,” the robot and vogue dancers, created enough interest to allow people to adapt, mimic and eventually mainstream their “anti establishment” and “we’re into chaos, not music” ideologies. Eventually the underworlds impact is reversed and flipped, as it emerges from the everyday, being marketed to the public in which saw it as a nuisance, the anti establishment being morphed into a very desirable niche.

The Sex Pistols and their independence from the media, is what made them so interesting to the public, because they we’re abrasive, they created such a frenzy in the youth culture, and it was a movement in which didn’t need nor respond to wealth as it arise from the derelict lower classes. Clothes pegs, garbage bags and deconstruction became their canvas to express themselves.

This would be really interesting to play with, the ideology of subcultures, the exclusivity that transcends financial constraints. Consumer research and dynamics in which focus on certain imagery and marketing that evokes a status and loyalty. For me it would being a stand alone against the mass market, everyone seems to think the most extreme alternative is the most effective, but creating a point of difference that just tripped up, tricked, a slight variable from your competition would be more effective, we forget that the fashion and design world is so set, we NEED TO FORCE a reimagining and if a few slightly pull the preconceived notions, ever so slightly, we will have more of an impact overall. Almost retraining our consumer, engaging them in a less threatening way, allowing them to feel more engaged.

Daslu, luxury, consumption and ethics Week 1

Daslu, luxury, consumption and ethics

Week 1

Reading about the “Daslu” luxury lifestyle extravagance made me nauseous. Knowing from research conducted last year of the contributions to art and street culture their countrymen at the lower end of society have been campaigning underground.

Sao Paulo’s ghetto “favela” inhabitants, creating massive graffiti mosaics of emaciated women, clutching coat hangers with dresses disintegrating into nothingness seem to highlight the social hardships ignored by their wealthier constituents. These images are repeated on main artilleries and even in the sewers all showing a really prominent discontent and social imbalance, that compounded by the minority of wealthy makes the social landscape volatile at best. Having known nothing of Daslu during my original foray into Sao Paulo underworld, street-culture and graffiti art, their own struggles however side stepped by the exclusive clientele whom travel by air or armoured car into the Daslu emporium.

As for my response to luxury and the lifestyle that it encourages really irritated me further. How we’re marketed to, images of grandeur offered to us as we’re inevitably groomed into smaller market sectors of these “luxury” labels, we can’t afford the couture dress then we get the perfume. These small purchases extending the gap between the haves and the have-nots as we ourselves are creating massive market contribution stability and allowing couture to becoming further distance away from our reach.

Luxury is something that I personally disagree with justifying in a contemporary society, why can’t we show a pride in a quality design and originality, as opposed to blind label loyalty.