Sunday, March 7, 2010

Condoms as a means of textile!!!???...0_0

Its finally the 10th week of the quarter and its the final blog and I'm thinking, DANG! this quarter has gone by so fast! Just like how our quarter went by so fast, so does fashion. Fashion, its what you make it and its how you bring it. What may have been "in" just a month ago is now the vintage and what was "in" back then is now the new trend. Fashion, when we think about it, isn't it just recycling a lot of the fashions that existed with just little tweaks and adjustments, additions and subtractions, and influence from everyday things? Kawamura talks about how fashion used to be for the elite, however, today fashion is "enjoyed by almost everyone at every social level (Kawamura 105)Today we have so many influences in fashion, it is no longer the elite but everyday things, even condoms! YUP, u read right, condoms. There was a fashion show, obviously called The Condom Fashion show, that was held in China for the Reproductive Health and Technologies Expo. Dresses such as this --> Condom Fashion Show in China | Ah Boon.Net 阿�does this remind anyone of the Qiapao? ohhh yeah..... so, this fashion show had dozens of dresses made entirely up of condoms. From Qiapaos to wedding dresses, they were all made of condoms. When you think about it, clothing can be made from anything; Kawamura talks about how fashion in postmodern societies can be "anything and everything" (Kawamura 106) and this fashion show is a true statement of how fashion can be anything and everything.

(I'm going to Pic Spam because its the last blog and I think these dresses are both cool and weird!)
CondomDress05CondomDress07
CondomDress15CondomDress21

In one season of project runway there was a challenge for the designers to make a cocktail/party dress out of a burlap sack. Burlap sacks are what hold potatoes, not a form of textile to use for fashion; however we were proven wrong, a designer was able to make a beautiful and expensive looking dress out of an itchy and plain sack because of his creativity. Thats another topic that Kawamura talks about, creativity from a designer can result in beautiful clothing.
winning dress from the Burlap Sack challenge -->

other burlap dresses/fashion (who would have thought these were made of potato sacks?!)

So what did we learn from this course and the readings we've been reading? A whole lot!But the main points are that fashion depends on the culture, it depends on the person, it depends on the everyday life. Fashion is what you make of it, the streets are now treated as "fashion laboratories, and they are replacing Haute Couture" and the youth and people like us, are experimenting "with every possible clothing combination and create their own definitions of what fashion is." (Kawamura 106) FASHION- you can make your own definition of what it is.

COMPACT CHALLENGE? I've been pretty good! I didn't step foot inside of a mall this whole quarter, but then again I don't really go to the mall since theres no mall in Davis and I don't drive. I think I relapsed and bought cosmetics, but hey...a girl has to look good sometimes. But I do have a confession, I bought shoes (heels actually) but I really needed them for my cousins wedding and they were really cute! But I think this compact challenge was pretty cool, it taught me that the things that we buy are really unnecessary and a waste of money. So I might actually stick to this "buy only when necessary" thinking. Its the LAST week! Goodluck on presentations and finals everyone! :)

BLOG 10- April Gatpayat
Thanks everyone! Have a great spring break!

Sources:

Kawamura, Yuniya. Fashion-ology An Introduction to Fashion Studies (Dress, Body, Culture). New York: Berg, 2005.

Outside Sources and Images of Condom Fashion:



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